


Oliver the (Divorce) Lawyer

by Vixx2pointOh



Series: Oliver The ... [5]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blow Jobs, Complete, Court house smut, Cunnilingus, Eventual Smut, Eye Sex, F/M, Feelings, Fucking, Goth Felicity Smoak, Lawyer Oliver, Office Blow Jobs, Public Hand Jobs, Sassy, Sexual Tension, Smut, Suit Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-05-17 02:43:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 53,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14823708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vixx2pointOh/pseuds/Vixx2pointOh
Summary: Black tie, white shirt, grey suit... when Oliver put them on that chilly December morning, he hadn't planned on meeting her.'Her' being Felicity Smoak, the sassy dark haired college student and daughter of his (only) client.This should be fun...**COMPLETE**





	1. Furbies.

**Author's Note:**

> Hellooooooo  
> So this will be a multi chapter fic in the series, I'm planning on about 8 but knowing me it will probably be more.

_**Thank you to Bish, you get me.** _

 

__

**[December 2008]**

  
“Are you sure you’re up for this case Oliver?” John Diggle asked, as deep lines crinkled his richly dark forehead and his usually-warm mocha eyes narrowed at his protégé.

Oliver absently wet his lip with the tip of his tongue as he silently read the last few lines of the case notes. After closing the manila folder with the creased edges, Oliver looked up from his lap and nodded as resolutely as he could, “Absolutely John, I appreciate you offering it.”

The older man sat back in his leather chair, the sound of the soft creak it made in objection echoing through the office that would likely appear much larger but for the fact almost every inch of it was lined with files, boxes or law books.

“It’s a good case,” John smiled as his hands relaxed at his side, “I’ve met with our client, she’s…” he stopped himself when he realised he wasn’t sure what word to use next just as Lyla, another associate sauntered into the room with a smile on her face.  
“Flouncy,” she interjected as she offered John a knowing wink.

They shared a looked that Oliver had come to recognise but dutifully ignored, what his mentor chose to do, including his colleague, was entirely up to him.

_Even if it was Oliver’s last name on the sign in the lobby._

Oliver was under no illusion, he knew that the reason he, a fresh out of law school graduate, was _already_ being given something to ‘bite into’ was because the firm of Queen, Merlyn  & Associates bore his name – _well, his family name._

But sometimes in life, even when you’re handed certain opportunities, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve them.

“I’m meeting with her and her daughter at two, you can sit in, hear what our strategy is and then you’ll take the file from there,” John instructed before he sat forward and placed his clasped hands onto the contemporary dark chestnut desk, “with my oversight.”  
“Of course,” Oliver appreciated, “thank you.”

John smiled as Oliver stood up, tucked the client file under his arm and headed towards the door.  
“Oliver?” John spoke up, his voice stopping the younger man at the door.  
Oliver turned on his heels with an expectant smile, “Yes?”  
John stretched his shoulders back as he stood up and took a brief moment to look out across the bustling city from the twenty-eighth floor of the building.  
“We both know that you will get that corner office eventually,” he remarked as his eyes walked back to the younger man, “I just plan on having you work for it.”  
Oliver nodded as an appreciative smile threaded across his lips, “I expect nothing less.”

When Oliver had disappeared down the hall, John walked back over to Lyla and slowly ran his large hand down her spine and lightly over the round of her ass before she plucked his hand from her body and dropped it at his side.  
“Do you think he’s up for it?” she asked as she pressed her body into the lip of his desk.  
“It’s winnable,” he grunted before he grazed his fingertips up her leg.  
She stopped his advancement at the waist before she ran a slow hand through her short brown tresses, “You didn’t tell him about her daughter.”  
“Her,” John sighed with a laugh, “he will need to see to believe.”  
“I think she’s cute,” Lyla shrugged as she straightened John’s tie.  
“I think if you called her cute she would programme your iPhone to kill you.”

Lyla laughed, but John wasn’t kidding.

**< <<\-------->>>**

It was just after two when Oliver was riding in the elevator cab with John down to the twentieth floor where their client was waiting.  
“So her husband is worth $30 million?” Oliver asked as he tried to recount each of the factors he’d read through that morning.  
John nodded as he jostled his jacket back onto his shoulders, “There abouts although most of it is tied up in assets, it’s all tangible.”  
“And they were married…” he paused to glance down at the notes he’d written in his compendium, “…for three years and they have one daughter?”  
“Noooo,” John bleated, “Felicity isn’t _his_ daughter.”

“Oh, okay,” Oliver grimaced at his mistake as he scanned back over his notes, “it says here she’s nineteen and at MIT?”  
John nodded along, “That’s her.”  
“Smart kid,” Oliver remarked idly.  
The doors opened but John stopped Oliver disembarking, “Don’t call her that,” he said with his voice losing most of its candour.  
“What, smart?” the younger man jested.  
“The kid part,” John warned, “she’s not really a fan.”

As the two men walked towards the conference room, John jutted his arm out like a clothes line, stopping Oliver in his tracks.

He looked down the corridor of plate glass rooms and then back at the eager twenty-three year old who was wearing a confused look, “She’s a bit of a hugger,” John spoke quietly.  
“The daughter?” Oliver’s voice raised a few octaves as he tried to imagine what this daughter was shaping up to be.  
John choked back a laugh, “No, the mother.”  
They took a step forward together before John paused again, “just be prepared.”  
Oliver nodded, he was.

_Or at least he thought he was._

  
_He wasn’t._  
He should have paid more attention to the way John had expertly sidestepped the spritely woman’s hug, turning it into a brief handshake before she effused “Who is this?”

All he managed to get out was his first name before she pounced on him with a hug that found his arms flailing at his side for a half a minute before one instinctively tapped her on the back.

He stood motionless for a good few moments after she uncoiled herself from him before John clearing his throat startled Oliver back into motion.  
“This is Oliver Queen,” John introduced as he took his seat, “he’s going to be handling your case with me Ms Smoak.”

“Call me Donna,” she cooed as her fingertips brushed the hem of her tight blue dress, “You are really very handsome. Do you have a dad?”  
She made herself laugh as she reached out and patted his cheek.  
Oliver’s brow tugged inwards as he wondered whether or not she had made the correlation between his name and the name of the firm she was currently standing in, but seeing as her smile never altered, Oliver assumed she in fact had not.

“Theoretically or?” Oliver answered as a smile flirted with the edge of his lips.  
She took him by surprise a second time when her pink-tipped fingers pinched his cheeks, “You’re adorable, are you fresh out of law school?”  
“Oliver graduated head of his class and he’s a very good junior attorney Ms Smoak,” John remarked as Oliver stood, somewhat stunned at everything that had taken place since he’d set foot in that meeting room.  
“Oh, I like them young,” Donna winked as she made her way around the table and perched on one of the chairs, “makes a different to my soon to be ex-husband, “ she continued as she fluffed her hair and pulled down the hem of her dress, now sitting precariously close to the top of her legs, “I assume you wouldn’t need Viagra.”

**< <<\-------->>>**

Thirty minutes later found Oliver sitting alone in the meeting room, turning a pen around three fingers as he waited for John to come back from an urgent telephone call and for Donna to return from an apparently equally as urgent, bathroom primping.

On the _hat trick_ of twirling the pen without dropping it, the door to the meeting room open and Oliver sat upright in his chair just as the pen hit the glass table with a _clunk_.

He saw her boots first, Dr Martens in a matt black with laces that were tied to just above the ankle with the tongue of the boot drooping over the knot. The top of the boot blended almost seamlessly into the black skinny jeans until one of the knees was completely torn away.

He swallowed heavily as his eyes travelled up the curvaceous thighs to a taut alabaster mid-drift and a strip of black spandex he could only assume was supposed to be a top, covered by a red plaid shirt that hung over her frame like it was at least two sizes too big.

When he finally reached her face, after passing over a silver ankh pendant, he saw plum lips turned up into a lopsided smile and stunning blue eyes rimmed in charcoal, as a hand, with nails painted blue, ran through glossy black hair streaked purple.

“Can I help you?” he asked as she kicked the door closed behind her and scuffed her heavy shoes across the cloudy-grey twill carpet.  
“I dunno, can you?” the girl shrugged as she unwrapped a stick of gum and slipped it through her pouted lips, “Has she hit on you yet?” she asked as she pulled back a chair and slumped into it.

Oliver’s brow pulled inwards as he tapped a pen to his temple.  
“My mother,” she smirked while she lifted a leg onto the seat of the chair and perched her heel on the edge, “bubbly blonde woman in a very tight, very short dress.”

Oliver choked on the sharp inhale of air he took when the penny dropped in his mind.  
“Donna Smoak is your mother?” he gaped.  
She wasn’t at all what he had expected.

“You’re her new lawyer?”  
Oliver managed to collect himself and winch his jaw back up from his lap before he answered, “I’ll be assisting John.”  
Felicity sat back in the chair and tipped her eyes up to the ceiling before a smile passed over her lips and she softly breathed, “Oh, she will eat you up alive.”

**< <<\-------->>>**

Oliver dragged a sluggish hand through the shorts of his hair before he loosened his tie, fractionally, and pushed through the familiar doors of the dive bar that was an equal walk between the office and home.

He liked it there, it wasn’t pretentious or unnecessarily cramped with decor he didn’t understand. The music was an older man on a piano when he felt compelled or the muted tones of music from bygone eras that played over slightly-crackled speakers.

He never looked at the floor and the air was stagnant but no one bothered him there and no one gave two shits about the fact his father was one of the most prominent civil litigators in the State and he was just living in his shadow.

The waitress was in her late forties and hated small talk and the bartender would laugh you right out of the joint if you asked for any form of cocktail, but boy did the man know how to pick a velvety smooth whiskey.

Oliver took a seat at the bar tonight just as the music man started plunking away at the keys of the wooden antique in the corner in a tune that Oliver recognised but couldn’t recall the name of. A new scent of vanilla and jasmine caught his senses and for the first time since stepping through the door, Oliver looked up and around.

The lighting was dim but the glow from her laptop was all he needed to make out the familiar face of Felicity Smoak, the grunge-infused daughter of his one _and only_ client, sitting at a booth a few feet away.

Without asking, his usual drink was slid in front of him and he thanked the bartender with a flashed smile as he collected the tumbler from the oak bar and walked it towards Felicity.

“Is this seat taken?” he asked in a slightly deeper than normal voice as he stood over her, watching her hands float across the keys almost faster than his eyes could keep up with.  
“I’m just waiting for my ex-con boyfriend to get back from the pisser, and he doesn’t like guys talking to me,” she snipped without looking away from her computer screen, “or I only like chicks, I’m into furbies, I’m a Scientologist, take your pick, just whichever one of those means you don’t keep trying to hit on me right now.”

“Furbies?” Oliver laughed, in a voice more his own and one Felicity recognised enough to look up from her screen for.  
“You,” she chirped as she slid the half-drunk beer a little behind her laptop and out of his view.

“What are you doing here?” she asked as she blindly hit a few keys before closing the lid of her laptop.  
Oliver nodded to the half-finished drink she had tried to hide, “I think I should be asking you the same thing.”  
“Are you going to rat me out Oliver the divorce lawyer?” she smirked as she took a drink of the golden liquid and watched him over the thick rim.  
“Actually just attorney,” Oliver needlessly corrected, “but I am curious how you got that.”

She pulled her wallet from her pocket and slipped a ID from Indiana State out of one of the pockets, before she handed the same to him.  
“Megan Wabberchaswki,” Oliver read the name aloud.  
“I might have been a little tipsy when I picked the name but I have found if I do this,” she pulled her shoulders inward to press her breasts together which created a line of cleavage that almost touched her neck, “...most people don't look at the name,” she finished with a smack of her dark lips.

“Does your mother know you have a fake ID?” Oliver asked as he handed the same back.  
Felicity laughed effervescently while she pushed the ID back into her wallet, “she gave it to me on my 17th birthday,” she answered as her laugh tapered off, “So are you going to rat me out Oliver just an attorney?”  
He switched his weight from one foot to the other and nodded to the beer, “Swap that for a soda and I'll keep your secret,” he bargained.  
“Let me just consider your terms,” she said before she chugged back a few mouthfuls until Oliver pulled the mug from her hands.

"Fine, fine,” she teased as she flicked her head towards the other side of the booth, “you wanna sit?”  
Oliver slid the beer out of her reach and slipped onto the slightly cracked leather bench seat.  
“So, what are you doing in a haunt like this? Is there an Abercrombie and Fitch nearby?” Felicity teased with a playfully mocking glint in her eye and a coy smile twitching at the seam of her lips.

Oliver shifted the fine steel gray wool jacket off his shoulders and folded it in half before he neatly laid it on the bench beside him, “it's not their late night,” he answered deadpan for a few moments before a smile plucked the edge of his mouth, “And what about you, is Hot Topic closed?”  
Felicity looked down at her outfit and laughed generously, “nice one Doogie.”

Oliver took a slow sip of his drink, letting it warm the back of his throat, “Doogie?”  
“Like Howser.”  
“You're old enough to know that show?” Oliver enquired, he barely remembered it and he had four years on her.  
“The lady that looked after me after school back in Vegas was a huge fan, she religiously watched reruns,” Felicity paused to order a lemon, lime and bitters from the waitress before she turned back to Oliver and continued, “You just seem too young to be a serious divorce attorney.”  
“Just attorney,” Oliver remarked, even though he knew she was doing it to get a rise from him, “and you seem too young to be in your final year at MIT.”

A smile twinkled her eyes, “Have you been looking me up?”  
Oliver ran a nervous finger under his tie. The truth was, after the meeting, he'd found himself Googling _Felicity Smoak_ but little more than he already knew from her mother's case notes came up, although one thing had become crystal clear in what he found, she was incredibly bright.

“Only from your mother's case,” he took another sip to hide the misdirect.  
“I see,” she sat back against the booth and gave him a knowing smile, the kind that said she wasn't entirely sure she believed him but she wasn't going to challenge him either.  
“So do you think she has a shot at getting something from the douche?” she asked, graciously moving on from the last conversation.  
A question pinged Oliver's brow up towards his hairline, “Are you worried about tuition?”  
She smiled as she shook her head and brushed her hair behind her ear, “I have a scholarship, she just deserves something for putting up with that shithead for a few years, you know?”  
  
“Shithead? Is that your take on your step father?”  
Her smile dropped and her eyes narrowed, “I did pretty damn fine without a father for 16 years what the fuck makes you think I would need a step father?”

Oliver immediately realised his mistake, “I'm sorry I didn't mean anything by it,” he apologised.  
She stared at him for a solid minute before the smile returned to her face, “I guess I can give you a pass just this once if you take the tie off.”  
“What's wrong with my tie?” Oliver asked as his fingers dragged down the luxuriant black silk.  
“I just feel like I'm in the Dean's office at a really fancy school or something,” Felicity laughed.  
“Fine,” Oliver relented as he loosened it and slipped the same over his head, “Better?”

“Much,” she replied as her drink was placed silently in front of her, the waitress disappearing before Felicity had a chance to thank her.  
“So, what were you doing?” Oliver asked as he tipped his head to her laptop.  
“It's probably best you don’t know,” was her coy response before she folded her lips around the straw and slowly sucked, maintaining eye contact with Oliver that found him needing to blink away.  
When his eyes returned she had dropped the straw from her lips and was idly stirring the ice around the chilled glass. “Are you in Star City for the holidays?”  
“I have an externship at Palmer Tech for IAP in the start of the year,” she shrugged, keeping her eyes tacked to the glass.  
“IAP?”  
“Independent Activities Period or MIT's answer to broadening your horizons, an externship is better than pottery lessons and life art drawing,” she answered dryly.  
“Well, the externship must be exciting.”  
“It's not Tokyo,” she mumbled under her breath.  
“Tokyo?”  
She sighed and finally looked up, “I was supposed to go to Tokyo on a study programme, but divorce number two happened and here I am.” Another sigh, “God, I sound spoiled, I don’t mean to,” she admitted with a third, heavier sigh.  
“Well Star City is no Tokyo so I’ll give you a pass,” Oliver grinned.

Felicity sipped back her drink for a few wordless moments, “That's okay, come graduation I’ll make up for it.”  
A smile flirted with her lips and rosied her cheeks.  
“And how might you do that?”  
She chewed her lip idly as she looked across the table at the virtual stranger she felt oddly comfortable with, even if he did look like a therapist with his hands neatly folded on the table and a slight smile tugging up the mole beneath his scruff.

She hadn’t told anyone of her plans for after graduation but as she considered Oliver Queen was unlikely to remember her once Donna’s case was settled, she found herself wanting to tell him.  
“The minute I graduate I’m going to take the bag I already have packed, hitch a ride,” she paused to consider an important facet of her plan, “preferably on the back of a motorbike, to the airport and buy a ticket to the furthest place I can afford and just...” she puffed out her fingers with a whoosh sound effect, “disappear for as long as I can.”  
Worry etched in his brow, “Leave everything you've worked for in life behind?”  
Felicity leaned closer and after two slow and contemplative breaths she answered him simply, “What is a life if you don’t _live_ it.”

 

* * *

**_A little shorter than chapters will be, but you know how I like to give you little teasers_ **

**_Let me know what you think_ ❤**


	2. Almost.

She saw it. It was hard to miss.  
But she never said a word, deciding instead to see how often he might brush his finger over it or casually clink it on the edge of the table as he talked before he realised he was wearing it, if he realised at all.

The count was now twelve.

She saw it alright.  
_It_ being the ring he wore on his ring finger made of polished silver and engraved around the edges with a rope-pattern. The ring that wasn’t a class ring now too tight for his middle finger, nor was it a Championship ring won for some reason or another.

 _Nope_ , there was no doubt in her mind that it was unequivocally a wedding ring.  
Oliver the divorce lawyer was married.  
_That wasn’t irony, but it did have a little melody of sorts to it_ she thought to herself.

Not that it was her business.  
Felicity was very well aware that it wasn’t, after all, a married man coming to a bar after work wasn’t some sordid sin, _only_ , she couldn’t shake the feeling that if she had leaned over the table, grabbed him roughly by his shirt collar and pressed her lips against his, wanton and eager with all the prowess of a lioness on heat, that he wouldn’t have pushed her away.

She supposed she _could_ be wrong about those slightly softened eyes, gently creased into a smile at the corners, or the way his lips turned up into a lopsided smile when they spoke – she could have been wrong; _but she never had been before._

Not with the college professor.  
Not with the swim team captain in high school.  
And not with that lacrosse player, though that one was very much unwelcomed.

And, she couldn’t shake the feeling she wasn’t wrong about Oliver either.  
Even as he twisted the ring idly with his thumb while they talked.

_Maybe she was wrong._

**< <<\-------->>>**

It was nearly 10pm when the frigid air made Felicity instinctively shiver as they walked out into the wintery evening air. Oliver draped his jacket over her shoulders without a second thought until she looked up at him a little bewildered by the gesture.

“That’s very chivalrous Oliver just the attorney,” she mused as her feet shuffled on the concrete to warm herself up.  
He looked down at her, her lips sinfully full and salaciously dark, before he tore his eyes away, cleared his throat and said, “You know you could just call me Oliver.”  
She shrugged as she looked out to the expanse of nothing where Oliver’s eyes had darted to escape the trap of staring at her lips for far longer than he ought.  
  
“I could...” she remarked with a coquettish smile, “but it doesn’t seem like it would be as much fun.”  
She knocked her elbow into his arm impishly because, despite her ebony hair and her penchant for dressing in clothes that resembled a black and white version of a colour wheel, Felicity was fun and playful and sassy and snarky and just about any other synonym you could think of – because it was a drastic misconception that someone who looked like her was automatically sullen and depressive and mad at the world. Her chip wasn’t _that_ big.  
  
Oliver allowed his eyes to linger on her once again as he thought of the question he had purposely avoided asking, even though it had hung on his lips all night, but now, as he watched her blink long, thick lashes against her alabaster skin in a true representation of the stark contrast between blackest night and purest snow, he could only barely hold it back by biting the inside of his lip so hard his eye winced.

“But,” she hummed, seemingly oblivious to the self-inflicted wound that was now making him taste blood, “as for the jacket, thank you, I…” her words trailed off when her attention was taken by the rumble of a motorbike rolling past them and stopping at a red light a stone’s throw away.

It was a road bike with chrome parts that glistened and reflected the flickering orange streetlamp above it. It idled heavy and low with a thrum that Felicity found herself reeling the effects of like a deep growl at the apex of her legs.

The rider wore deep blue jeans that fit snug over his sculpted legs and a black leather jacket that gave little indication of his physique underneath it, but Oliver doubted it was anything short of _Adonis_ ; to borrow his teenage sister’s vocabulary.

Felicity's plump, rich plum lips stayed parted as she ran her tongue absently across the bottom one, wetting it until it had a lacquered shine to it. Oliver found himself momentarily stunned by them as he imagined each breath she took chilling them, at least until she spoke and startled his eyes away.

“Hey,” Felicity spoke, smoky and sultry as she walked with a soft, feline-like sway of her full hips over to the edge of the curb.  
The stranger flicked up his visor and unashamedly let his chestnut eyes roam up and down her body in a way that had Oliver’s hand fisting against his leg.  
“Hey,” he replied, with only a little more exuberance than a coma patient.  
Felicity swept a hand through her dark tresses, exposing the soft slope of her ivory neck, “Nice bike.”

Oliver stepped closer, though he hadn’t realised he’d done so until the scent of her perfume tickled his nostrils.  
The rider unclipped his helmet, wrestled it from his head and once free of it, shook a hand through his deep brown hair. His eyes were relentless as he made no secret about feasting them on her.  
“It would look better with you on it,” he purred, with a debonair charm that Oliver immediately decided to hate.  
Felicity scuffed her shoe against the concrete and trickled her fingers down the naked side of her neck in a trick that had both men following them, “We could test that theory,” she answered with a smile that turned up the wingtips of her luscious lips.  
His head bounced in a nod before he rolled the bike a little closer to the edge of the road, “A'ight,” he swooned before he revved the engine and offered her his hand.

Felicity shrugged Oliver’s jacket from her shoulders, neatly folded it in half and handed it to him.  
“Do you know this guy?” Oliver asked through gritted teeth as he kept his hands pinned to his sides.  
“No,” she quipped, offering him the jacket a second time, “Do you?” her words threaded with a whimsical laugh.  
He still didn't take the jacket.  
“You can’t go with him,” he argued.  
Felicity lifted his rigid arm and slung the folded jacket over it like a clothesline, “Ooo-kay,” she replied, dusting off his concern with a frisky smirk.

“Who’s this guy?” the nameless rider asked while his chin jutted towards Oliver, “your lawyer?”  
Felicity looked over her shoulder at Oliver as she walked towards the thrumming bike, “It shows right?” she giggled sweetly, almost melodically to Oliver’s ears.  
“Felicity do you even know his name?” he demanded, as he stepped hastily towards her and puffed out his chest in a display that was accidental and probably looked like something from a nature documentary.  
She looked at him quizzically, like she truly didn’t understand his concern – Oliver was after all a stranger to her once too.  
“Does it matter?” she didn’t give him any time to answer, “See you later Oliver.”  
_Just Oliver._

“I mean, given you’re _sixteen_ ,” he announced loudly.  
Both the sharp tone and his actual words made _tall, dark and handsome_ look up.  
“Yo, what?” he asked, immediately uncomfortable as he retracted the hand he’d offered to Felicity.  
“I’m not,” she rolled her eyes and softly shook her head, “he's lying.”  
“And,” Oliver quipped while he straightened his shoulders and put on his best ‘jury voice’, “you still have that ankle monitor,” his brow floated up towards his hairline, “so the police are going to come knocking because I don’t think this guy is part of your parole conditions,” he continued eloquently and without smirking once – at least visibly.  
  
“Oh nah...,” the rider shook his head furiously.  
Felicity looked back towards Oliver, her smirk now replaced with two tersely pulled lips, “What are you doing?”  
Oliver smoothed his hand down the front of his shirt and cocked his head a little towards one shoulder, “My civic duty as an officer of the Court.”

“Call me in two years?” the rider said, utterly convinced that the tale Oliver had told was true, before he pushed his helmet back onto his head and burned through the intersection without wasting another moment.  
“What the hell?” Felicity barked out with both hands now pressed into her hips.  
“You wouldn’t have thanked me if you got syphilis or were dead in a ditch somewhere.”  
She shifted her weight from one foot onto the other and raised a single brow skyward, “If I’m dead in a ditch I wouldn’t be thanking _anyone_ because I would be _dead_ and without any conscious thoughts,” she bickered with a rogue smirk.  
Oliver smiled.  
“Noted.”

She picked up a discarded can from the gutter and casually carried it over to a trashcan nearby as Oliver followed her with his gaze.  
“Nice touch with the ankle monitor,” she said with her back towards him, but when she turned she was wearing a vivid smile.  
He bobbed his head somewhat proudly, “Yeah I thought so too.”

Her shoulder’s shivered when a breeze swept over them and lifted her hair like a mask across her face, somehow making her eyes appear even more intensely blue.  
“I’ll take you home,” Oliver said, as he offered her his jacket once again.

She took it and smiled, “Two diet sodas and you think I’m that easy?” she teased.  
“To _your_ home,” Oliver corrected, his fingers instantly pulling at his shirt collar as it constricted his breathing.  
“Thanks for the clarification,” she hummed as she stepped towards him, his suit jacket almost completely swallowing her and a certain thread of danger in her eyes as they hung onto his, “but…” she blinked, severing their eye contact, “you’ve had at least four drinks. It wouldn’t be responsible of me to get into a car with you.”  
He watched as a smirk flirted with the corner of her mouth; given her keenness to get on a bike with a complete stranger only moments ago.  
He stretched his neck and rolled his shoulders to quell the way his mind had began reacting to everything she said, _everything that she did._  
“I meant we'll catch a taxi.”

After he called for one they stood in silence, Felicity leaned up against a brick wall with her fingers wildly typing something on her phone, and Oliver a few steps ahead, watching his breath fog up the chilly night air.

There was something about her, something he’d felt almost the instant she had walked into that meeting room earlier that day. It was as though she was magnetic and his eyes were pulled quite helplessly towards her. He’d been able to write the afternoon off to the gnawing hunger in his stomach due to skipping lunch and the late night he’d had the night before pouring over depositions from a case his father was handling that he had been ‘allowed’ to observe from the side lines on his own time.

But that night, seeing her in the bar, watching her in moment that felt like time stood still for them, as she gently chewed on her straw or feathered her fingers through her hair, he’d felt it all again. Thinking perhaps that the dry spell he’d put himself into was simply teasing him, he had even tried to keep his eyes fixated on a single crumb on the oak table between them, but hearing her speak without being distracted by her azure eyes had been even worse because her tone was nothing short of alluring and the words she spoke were witty and playful and the few times a fruity laugh floated across the table, Oliver found himself imagining mapping her body with kisses until he found a spot that would make her laugh _just like that._

And he hated himself for it.  
Because that just _couldn’t_ happen.  
He had a plan. A map. A course to stay.

Oliver had shoes to fill.

**< <<\-------->>>**

  
“So why the bikes?” Oliver asked, his voice breaking the silence that had hung over the backseat of the taxi for the last ten minutes.  
Felicity pulled her eyes back from watching the passing lights outside the window and skipped them over to Oliver who was sitting almost rigid against the seat with his eyes taped to the back of the seat in front of him.

“I know it’s cliché,” she shrugged as her eyes fell to the way he kept his hands neatly clasped on his lap, “but sometimes a girl wants a little cliché.”  
Oliver shifted, bevelling his shoulders with the leather seat as he turned his head towards her.  
“There is cliché and there is stepping willingly into the role of a future murder victim,” he debated.  
She laughed off his serious tone before she laid her cheek against the cool leather between them, “Do me a solid and make sure they get a hot chick to play me okay? And I want you to slap them with an injunction if they make her wear black lipstick, this is deep plum,” she quipped before folding her lips over one another and popping them open, “there is a difference.”

But Oliver didn’t smile, not even a little one that made his dimple twitch.  
Nothing.  
Not even an _almost_ smile.

“Oh come on, lighten up,” she badgered as she slapped his arm with the back of her fingers.  
“You’re a smart woman Felicity so I’m just trying to think why you’d make a dumb decision.”  
He didn’t mean to sound like he was giving her a lecture, at least he didn’t think he meant to sound like that, but when she lifted her head from the seat and crinkled her nose and brow inwards, he got the distinct impression that was exactly what she heard.  
  
“Wow,” her lips pursed as she tugged down on the cropped tee she was wearing, “we’ve known each other what, three hours? And you think you have me _all_ figured out,” she retorted.  
He too resorted to tugging on his clothing (one cuff of his pressed white shirt) as the atmosphere between them became both heated _and_ frosty.  
“You were about to get on a bike with a stranger,” he quarrelled, unable to stop himself even if he wanted.  
“You’re not one to talk about good choices,” she threw back at him with narrowed eyes, now obtrusively shadowed.  
Oliver’s brows scowled, “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
Felicity looked down at the ring on his finger, “Does your _wife_ know you’re here?”  
_Taking me home, looking at me like that?_

His face softened, almost animated now, “My what?”  
A bemused chuckled threaded through his words.  
Then he realised he was still wearing it.

“Oh this, shit, I’m-“ he wrestled it from his finger far more rabidly than he needed, but it seemed as though his finger had swollen inside the ring just to torment him, “I’m not married,” he finally breathed as it came loose and he slammed it into his pocket.  
She said nothing, but her eyes didn’t seem to believe him.  
“I just wear a wedding ring,” he continued, his mouth now resembling a grimace.  
Even the taxi driver laughed.  
“Vladimir here thinks that needs more explaining,” Felicity comically said as she read the driver’s name from his taxi badge.

Oliver sighed as he ran a lethargic hand through his cropped hair, “I’m young, granted not as young as you,” _was his subconscious trying to remind himself that the tempest he found decidedly attractive was 19?_ , he carried on without missing a beat, “but young. People don’t want to take sensitive advice about their relationship from a young guy who looks like the only issue he's had relationship wise was related to the senior prom,” – Dig’s words, not his – “I wear the wedding ring to appear like I know what I’m saying,” he admitted, feeling a blush under his cheeks warming them a soft shade of pink.  
“And do you?” she quizzed.  
“I know the law, yes.”  
It didn’t exactly answer her question, but it was all he was willing to divulge.

Felicity, however, wasn’t prepared to let go of that thread, “But not the relationship side?”  
He wet his lips with his tongue, stealing the moment to think of the ‘right’ thing to say, “I’ve always found them a little strange.”  
She sat back in her seat and smiled out the window, “Finally, something we can agree on.”

He was going to ask her what she meant but before he could, the car started to slow and then pulled alongside the curb.  
“Home sweet home,” she remarked, in a tone that suggested the opposite was true.  
“I’ll walk you up,” Oliver insisted, but before Felicity had a chance to tell him it wasn’t necessary he’d told the driver to wait and slipped out of the car.

They walked up the wide, paved path that passed through a row of deciduous trees, now just skeleton of brittle branches, and up the concrete stairs laden with salt crystals in case is snowed over night, before they reached the locked glass door, set into a wall plated in frosted glass.

She keyed in a code and opened the door, “I’m safe inside,” she looked from side to side, over each shoulder, “no bikers here to whisk me away.”  
Oliver leaned into the lobby and Felicity caught the scent of his aftershave radiating from his collar as he looked around, playfully checking, “alright, noted,” he remarked with a stiff smile that was doing its best to hide a broader one.

“Thanks for your chivalry.” She slipped his jacket from her shoulders and held it out to him.  
Wordlessly Oliver took it and wrung it between his hands.  
“So you’re not married?” he blurted out, instantly wishing he hadn't just let go of the question that he’d been toying with all night in such a terrible and embarrassing manner.  
But when Felicity looked thoroughly perplexed at his completely off the mark quip, he realised he had done _just that._

The only thing that could save him now was the ground swallowing him up whole.  
“Uh...,”  
He’d actually managed to make Felicity, someone who seemed to have a witty comeback to _everything_ speechless in his cataclysmic word fumble.  
If talking was a soccer match he ought to be red carded for that.

“I just mean, no ring,” he cringed, he wasn’t dragging himself out of this unscathed, but maybe he could mitigate it somewhat, “unlike me.”  
The slight chuckle he ended with sounded like a frog in his throat.  
“I’m nineteen,” she puzzled as she watched the six foot man turn his shoulders inward in a fruitless effort to make himself invisible, but she also wasn’t a fool because she knew what he was almost trying to ask.

And maybe she should have put him out of his misery with a swift answer that would smooth that tormented brow of his. It wouldn’t be the truth, but she hadn’t been wrong in the bar and his reaction to the biker had solidified it.

But he seemed frightened of the attraction and she had decided as they walked in step towards the complex's door that she would tell him a lie he probably didn’t want to hear, but maybe needed to hear all the same.

Felicity was entirely prepared to invent a boyfriend.  
But for reasons she didn’t understand herself, she didn’t.  
“I’m not attached,” she remarked as she feathered her left hand in the air to prove it. “Thanks for the ride home Oliver,” she added with a kindly smile.

“Yeah well you know, I had to get home too, so, think nothing of it,” he said with an offhanded shrug but a smile that lifted up his soft lips and wrinkled his groomed beard.

As Oliver folded himself back into the taxi, Vladimir twisted to look through the Perspex divider, “Where to?” he asked in a husky voice.  
Oliver pulled the belt across his chest and buckled it with an echoing click, “Back to where you picked us up from, I live a block from there.”  
“Couldn’t you have just walked home?”  
Oliver just smiled as the cab pulled away from the curb, while his eyes wandered back towards the four storey apartment building thinking – before he caught himself – which light might be hers.

**< <<\-------->>>**

  
Felicity slid her tongue across the front of her teeth behind her top lip as she wandered into the reception area of Queen, Merlyn & Associates. Today she wore a slim ribbed woollen sweater with a stiff-collared white shirt underneath and a black and white houndstooth skirt that followed her sleek curves down to her mid thigh before it kicked out into a ruffled but short mermaid tail. Black woollen tights and polished black ankle boots finished off her look.

It was about as corporate Felicity got but despite her desire to be packing for Hong Kong instead, she would make the most of the externship at Palmer Tech regardless and she didn't think they would take too lightly to a black Sabbath tee and ripped jeans.

She idly chewed the corner of her matt black thumbnail as she waited for the middle aged receptionist with a kind face and a neatly quaffed hair to finish the phone call.

“Can I help you?” the cheery woman asked with a thick but charming Russian accent.  
“I just need to drop something off for Oliver...” _the divorce lawyer_ , she stopped herself with a smile, “Queen.”

“One moment dear, have a seat,” she sung happily as she lifted the handset on her phone console.  
“Oh you don't need to...”  
Felicity was hushed with a raised finger that kindly but directly pointed her to a waiting area of plush leather armchairs and a decadently-red maple-wood table carrying carefully placed _high brow_ magazines.

She really didn't need to see him, and maybe she could have argued the point with woman but she decided that likely wouldn't make a difference.

So she dragged her feet over to the chairs, eyeing the abstract painting on that wall that seemed to be nothing more than random brush strokes in muted tones of fawn and gold on a canvas of muddy brown, and yet it held her attention for at least five minutes until a familiar voice tugged her eyes away from it.

“Felicity.”  
She turned to find Oliver in a sharply tailored brown suit, not unlike the hue of a sorely craved coffee, which was complemented by an ivory shirt, slightly sheened with pinstripes and a grey patterned tie. For a moment Felicity found herself wondering just how many suits he owned, until his continued words brought her back to the present.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you,” his smile and surprise were genuine as he gestured with one hand and kept the other in his pocket, “when Raisa said Ms Smoak was here, I assumed she meant your mother.”  
She ran her fingers through the ends of her sleek ponytail, “Sorry to disappoint you,” she quipped.  
Her retort had him flustered and she watched his pocketed hand shake the expensive Breguet watch on his wrist.  
“You didn’t,” he flustered momentarily before he took a stilling breath, “at all.”  
The hand from his pocket lifted out and his fingertips grazed down her spine while his other hand directed her down the hall, “We can talk down here.”

Despite that fact she had only been tasked with a simple ‘drop and run’, Felicity found herself allowing him to lead her to a small interior meeting room.

She walked in first, it was different to the room they had met in, a few feet smaller and it was completely windowless. The lights were a warm orange and the air con had kept it a tepid temperature, both of which gave the room a pleasant ambience.

“What can I do for you?” he wondered out loud.  
She heard the click of the door closing behind her. The crisp sound of it made her turn to find Oliver so close that if she reached out her arm a fraction she could have grazed her finger tips over his woven, black leather belt.  
His eyes were softly lidded and a deep, oceanic blue, while his scruff looked darker and fuller than it had last night, _or maybe she just hadn’t been this close to it before?_

A moment lapsed before Oliver stepped back as he blinked down to the ground, he had been standing too close, watching her parted lips inhale and plush against each other when she opened her mouth to answer him, but no words came out.

“I just came to drop off...” she paused to wrangle a brown envelope from her canvas messenger bag, “...give you this.” She held the envelope out and Oliver took it, “Donna asked me to bring it into town seeing as I was coming this way,” she added, just to emphasise it hadn’t been her idea, although she decided to omit that she hadn’t argued the request even once.  
He rolled the envelope mindlessly into a cylinder in his hands, “The externship?”  
Felicity found herself nodding but her entire focus was on the long, thick digits on his hands as they stroked the curve of the envelope, before she coughed and blinked herself back up to his face, “Yeah, they wanted to see me before it starts next month.”

Oliver twisted his herculean wrist and watched the seconds hand on his luxury timepiece flick through two clicks before he spoke, “Let me buy you lunch.”  
It was a little after 12, so not a completely inane idea.  
She shook her head softly, her straightened black hair swishing too and fro in its elastic.  
“That’s fine,” she answered, her voice soft and thin, almost unsure of her own response.

Her tongue bathed her lower lip before it sunk behind the dark, pillowed gates and Oliver only just managed to stop a wanton groan in his throat.  
_Shit_ , he barely knew this girl, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her.  
“If we talk about your mother at least twice, I can count it as a business expense,” he chortled.

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” she apologised, “I have a date with an internet café and a tiny misdemeanour.”  
Her shoulders jostled with a light, playful laugh.  
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” he replied with a wink.  
Another smile of heavenly lips, the colour of bad thoughts.  
“Probably for the best.”  
“Dinner then?”  
He couldn’t seem to stop the words, but he was also fairly certain he didn't actually want to.

He watched her teeth tug on her lip as he fantasized about replicating the same momentary trenches she made with his own pearly whites.  
“Why?” she asked once her teeth set her lip free.

A stilted laugh. “Because we all have to eat.”  
She tipped her head a little to the right and blinked her dark-rimmed eyes up at him.  
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

 _He did._  
“Why don’t you tell me what you mean, just so we’re both clear,” he implored, in the farfetched possibility his assumption was wrong.  
“Why do you want to go out to dinner with me?” she quizzed pointedly.  
_It wasn’t wrong._  
“I'm just looking after my only client’s daughter,” he effused with a half faux smile.  
“No,” she argued softly, not giving him an inch, “that was last night and making sure I didn’t end up in a ditch, remember? Why dinner? Why me?”  
She wanted him to admit it, admit what his eyes had been telling her, as cliché as that sounded – she needed to know she wasn’t wrong.

She was so close he could have kissed her, pressed her back into the door, lifted her up it a little, wrestled her lips with his, felt her tongue slip into his mouth and her nails rake across his scalp. He could imagine, vividly, every second of it. Until he blinked.

Because that would be reckless.  
Reckless and stupid.  
And he was neither.

“I don’t know,” he let out a deflated sigh.  
Her fingers rippled down his arm until they hung off his wrist trapped at his side, “Well, if you figure it out, let me know.”

She walked around him and Oliver stayed staring into a vacant space until he heard the door close behind her.

**> >>because<<<**


	3. Trouble

 

He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her.  
He _had_ tried. Reasonably hard, if he did say so himself.  
He'd drafted three affidavits for John's clients, poured through fives years’ worth of bank statements with Lyla, taken his lunch in his office where he could read up on some new case law regarding trust formation, and he'd cleaned every inch of his office, _twice_.

But as the week rounded out to Friday, he still hadn’t managed to shake her from his mind.

Last Friday when she had asked him _why_ it had thrown Oliver into a tailspin, not because he didn’t know the answer but because he absolutely _did_ know the reason; he was inexplicably drawn to her and any excuse to be in her presence was good enough for him.

And then, after that realisation hit him, all he could think about from that point on was the insatiable urge he had to know whether or not that deep plum lipstick she wore on her full and flirty lips had a flavour, he wondered if it would be a little sticky to the touch or would her gloss make the kiss a little slippery?

He wanted to know.  
He needed to know.

He wanted to study her lips, memorize them with his tongue to learn every curve. He wanted to know if she liked to move, did she make noises, did she like it a little rough, would she bite him, make him moan?

He straightened his tie as every inch of him suddenly rose two degrees.

He looked at the paperwork sat on the corner of his desk in the woven-plastic mail tray. There was absolutely no urgency to them, she didn’t need them before Christmas a week from now, she probably didn’t even need them before New Years, _but_ been a conscientious attorney wasn’t a bad thing. _Right_?

No one could fault him for being extra diligent or going that extra mile.  
That was a good thing.  
It didn’t take much for Oliver to convince himself that this entirely selfish action was tantamount to an act of chivalrous attorney.

He buttoned his navy blazer and tucked the manila envelope under his jacket.  
“Going to see a client,” he called as he walked past his secretary, Jenny, who barely looked up from her screen to half-heartedly nod.

He looked down at his phone and smiled as he travelled the lift down to the lobby. Felicity had given him her number in the bar when he mentioned that her mother wasn’t the easiest person to get hold of.

He shot off a text, **I have some documents for Donna, could I meet you in the city for lunch to give them to you?**  
She replied pretty quickly, **you can drop them by the apartment** , then she gave him the door code and instructions on where to find a spare apartment key, advising that **mail goes missing a lot so just put them on the table inside.**

That wasn’t exactly what he’d hoped for.  
But turning back now would mean having to admit his reasons weren’t chivalrous at all. So he hailed a taxi and after one pulled alongside the curb, Oliver shook the brisk wintery weather from his shoulders and slumped into the back seat, lamenting his ‘diligence’.

**< <<\-------->>>**

  
The taxi pulled up to the curb in front of the apartment complex and Oliver decided to not make the driver wait. Donna’s apartment wasn’t all that far from the City and maybe a brisk walk would help him clear this nonsense out of his head.

Not that Felicity herself was nonsense, just the idea that they…could ever.

He keyed in the code Felicity had given him and stepped to the side to let an older woman dragging her trolley bag behind her, out of the complex first before he strode in. Through the small lobby lined with mail boxes where he’d left her the night before, the building turned into a light and airy glassed-in atrium where interlocking buildings fenced off the space.

It was only as he walked towards a building on the far side of the complex, following both the apartment number Felicity had given him and the instructions of the signs he passed as he walked, did Oliver realise that none of the windows he’d looked back at with wonderment the other night could have belonged to Felicity.

He climbed the concrete and steel external stairwell three flights before he turned left and walked a minimalist gangway past four doors until he reached apartment 209. He checked her instructions again before he blinked down to the doormat and found a ceramic cat sitting right where Felicity had said it would be. He stooped low and lifted off the head, smiling when he found the key. It didn’t exactly seem safe to keep it there but he was the type of person who never used the same pin number or password twice, no exceptions.

He knocked on the door first and rocked onto the heels of his Bolvaint leather shoes as he passed the few moments he waited by studying the small scuff on the toe of his left shoe. When the time had felt sufficiently long enough, though it had probably realistically only being thirty seconds, Oliver threaded the key into the lock and turned it.

It clicked without resistance and the door opened without a clichéd squeak. He stepped into the apartment and dutifully wiped his shoes on the jute mat by the door as he gently closed the door behind him.

It was a nice, simple apartment, decorated in pale greys and muted blue tones. He doubted very much that Ms Smoak had put much of her own personal touches into the interior design and what he was standing in was probably the apartment as it was marketed. The room he was in was open plan and spanned the whole width of the apartment, stretching from a living room into a kitchen and then beyond that onto a patio that overlooked, from what he could tell at this distance, the suburbs across the harbour.

The only personal touches he could see were a few photos hung on the wall of Felicity and her mother through the years, a giant pop-art poster of Marilyn Monroe and an eclectic collection of throw cushions which made the tweed-grey sofa they were sitting on much more festive.

There wasn’t a table as such, but Oliver glanced around the room and decided Felicity must have meant the breakfast island that had three charcoal-grey pleather barstools neatly tucked under it and a laptop sitting open on top of it. He toed off his shoes, walked around the edge of the woven living room rug and stopped at the corner of the island where the kitchen began and a wall formed a hallway of sorts walling off the rest of the apartment.

Once he was closer, he recognised the laptop as Felicity’s; the same one she had in the bar. While it may have been open, the screen was ‘asleep’ and Oliver respectfully resisted the urge to tap a key to see if it would spring into life. He placed the envelope on the white marble benchtop and sighed listless to himself.

_He should go._

It was then, just as he was about to head back towards the door, that a noise turned his head. In one of those moments where it wasn’t clear whether the sound was imagined or real, Oliver stood on the cusp of the hallway and listened carefully.

He heard it again, though he couldn’t for the life of him decipher what it was. It sounded like a voice, but it wasn’t words. He took a step down the hallway, sliding his sock-sheathed feet along the varnish wood until he heard it a third time; a little clearer.

It was something akin to a hum, and it sounded silvery and warm, perhaps even a little wet. His eyes wandered the hallway in search of the origins of the noise but he stopped before he reached the first door. It was closed. Oliver took a breath and a moment to realise that he was sneaking down the corridor of an apartment that wasn’t his, listening for a sound that…

He heard it again, and it was louder now (or the fact he was closer may have explained that). It wasn’t emanating from behind the closed door, of that he was almost certain, but despite his realisation that he really shouldn’t be there, _like this_ , Oliver kept sliding himself closer to the noise without even realising it.

The next time he heard it, it sounded louder still and practically echoed off the embossed beige wall behind him, until the realisation of exactly what it sounded like hit him like a cement truck.

It was desperate, breathy, moaned… and decidedly female.

He knew he needed to leave, but without any conscious thought he found himself being dragged closer and closer towards it until he’s standing in front of an open door with a perfect view.

Felicity was lying on the queen-sized bed, the teal and baby blue comforter was kicked to the end of the bed and a black sheet was draped over her waist, slightly skewed at one hip, revealing a tall hip bone pulling her skin taut around it. Her naked skin looked almost translucent against the dark linen, like a single star burning brilliant white against a midnight sky. Her smooth stomach was flushed with a beautiful pink glow as it rolled slightly with the arch of her back against the mattress.

One willowy arm was hidden beneath the sheet while the other was gently caressing her breast, moving between a slow grope and two fingers teasing and tweaking the rosebud nipple into a tight peak. Pillows propped her up slightly against the headboard and loose sections of hair stuck to her clammy cheeks now flushed with a warm, glowing amber hue. Her teeth were clamped into her lip, just at the middle, while haphazard moans spilled from her mouth.

And then his eyes finally travelled to hers.  
Brilliant blue, wide and wildly expressive and... _trained right on him._

Shit.  
“Fuck,” Oliver sputtered, “Sorry, I'm,” he fumbled for words as his feet completely refused to move, frozen in place right where he stood.  
  
“Leave, I’ll,” he stammered, trying to force his body to do what his mouth was conveying.  
Felicity pinched her nipple between her thumb and forefinger hard enough to startle a fervent howl from her plush lips. Her eyes studied him, with a dark whimsy threaded through them before she purred, “Or you could stay.”

Finally his feet moved and Oliver stumbled backwards before he took flight towards the front door, only once he had reached it, his feet halted and he blinked deliriously at the smooth grey paint.  
  
He could hear her bare feet as they padded across the wooden floor and stopped just behind him. Oliver turned slowly to find Felicity, now wrapped in a black and cream silk kimono robe, looking bemused by him.

Her breasts were still tinged pink as the warm tendrils of blush disappeared down the line of her robe. Her hair is still piled messily onto her head in a relaxed bun that spilled threads of silky black hair down her face before she pushed them back behind her ears.

Her legs were naked and his hands twitched at his sides as he imagined how soft they might feel beneath the rough pads of his fingers and the heavy glide of his palm. She stepped closer and the front opened just enough to show the tops of her thighs glistening.

_Or was he imagining that?_

But then an unexplained and entirely irrational anger washed over him and he was suddenly mad – mad for the way he felt, for what he was thinking, for what he wanted to do, and it came out in a snippy, almost judgmental, “What were you doing?”

Felicity laughed a slightly amused laugh as she crossed her arms over her chest, “Masturbating Oliver, quite successfully until you ran away like you’d seen something horrific,” she answered with a sardonic smile.  
“You weren’t supposed to be home,” he retorted, though his argument was flimsy at best.  
“I never said I wasn’t,” she corrected, “and any which way, _you_ were supposed to leave it on the table and go.”  
With her head dropped closer to one shoulder and her eyes wide under her arched brows, she made her stance astutely clear. Oliver opened his mouth to argue but she had a point and he could only close it back up again a few seconds later.

“Why wont you admit it, what are you afraid of?” Felicity asked as her shoulders relaxed into a soft shrug.  
Oliver scoured a hand across his scalp, “Admit what?” he tried to play her off despite knowing exactly what she was asking; he’d asked himself the same question at least three times on the ride over alone.

Her stance relaxed as one arm fell to her side, “I’ve seen the way you look at me Oliver,” she remarked, without a hint of an accusation in her tone.  
He looked away subconsciously unable to lie to her face, “How?”

Felicity took a step closer, invading Oliver’s space, but he didn’t move. Her eyes stayed locked to him, watching as his brow furrowed and the blue of his eyes became turbulent.  
“Like I’m trouble but you’re not sure you can stop yourself,” she breathed, barely above a whisper and her tone threaded with a husky rasp.  
He watched her lips as they closed only to fall open again with the next soft breath she took. His eyes couldn’t pull away from her, even if he’d wanted to.  
“And are you?” he asked, deep and gravelled.  
“Probably,” she slid closer still and his hand shuddered at his side as though each move she made was electric, “and can you?” her tongue wet her lips while Oliver swallowed heavily.  
Yes. A lie.  
“No.”

He kissed her hard, trapping her lips against his until they fell back against a wall with a thud that stole the breath from Felicity’s mouth. She stretched her body up onto her tippy toes to surge her lips harder against his. Her chest fought to expand with each breath as Oliver pressed his body against hers, pinning her to the wall. She coiled her leg around his waist and bucked her body into the burgeoning erection behind his pants, making him moan desperately into her mouth.

It was chaotic and wild, a mash of lips and teeth and tongue and none of them had any rhythm or pace as they crashed insatiably into each other until they pulled away, panting for air.  
“Is this what you wanted?” Oliver growled, his eyes heavy with the lust he’d been denying himself since the moment she had sashayed into his life.  
She fed her hand down his pants and let her fingers trace the outline of his cock in his briefs before she gripped him tightly through the stretch cotton and tugged.  
“You know what I want,” she hummed with a salacious grin.

With her back still against the wall, Oliver pushed the robe from her shoulders and down her arms and watched the silk fabric as it pooled around her waist. Her breasts were still lightly dusted pink and her nipples still tiny peaks begging to be licked and teased. A single finger drew a line up her body from her navel to the tip of her breast bone, relishing how smooth her ivory skin was.

He leaned down and kissed the threads of her neck, ravishing her warmth where her blood coursed underneath her skin and echoes of her heartbeat danced against his lips. His trail of kisses reached her collarbone before his thumb languidly glided over the ridge line.

When a wanton breath escaped her lips, he realised that she liked been touched there and so he leaned his mouth closer and folded his lips over that taut skin, kissing her twice before he nipped at the bone and smiled against her skin when her keening moan brushed against his cheek.

His same thumb fell down to her left breast with his fingers curving around the side of her body, being lifted with each deep breath she took. His pad circled her erect nipple and playfully batted it about until Felicity rocked her hips feverishly against him.

He growled and nipped her a second time as a breathy chuckle dripped from her smirking lips while her dainty hand folded around his. He wanted to slow it down, to enjoy every inch of her just like he had in the vivid dreams he’d never admit to, but when she took his hand from her breast and brushed it between her legs all his cognitive thoughts went flying out the window.

He could only hear her breathing and those tiny, wicked moans.  
He could only smell her ardent and heady scent.  
He could only taste her strawberry flavoured lip gloss staining his own mouth.  
And he could only feel the silky wetness of her sex.

At least until her fingers coiled in his hair, tugging at the short strands as she pulled herself up onto him.  
“You know what I want Oliver,” she whispered in his ear, pausing to swirl her tongue at the tip of his jaw, “I know you want it too,” she added before she stapled his lobe with her teeth and it was _fucking insane_ just how much that drove him wild.

He pulled back from her and pinned her hands above her head, nailing them to the wall with only one of his hands. She smiled mischievously up at him as he took the time to study her, to enjoy her, watching her breasts, those perfect little mounds, as they rose and fell with each breath she took. His gaze dropped down her smooth stomach, taut but not thin as it swept around her waist where the robe she was wearing was still belted but hung loose.

His fingers were still wet and glistening with her arousal as he put them closer to his lips and, with his other arm still holding her at the wrists and her eyes anchored on him, he fed them slowly into his mouth. The salty-sweetness exploded in his mouth and he didn’t even try to temper the moan that stumbled from behind his lips. She tasted fucking delicious and she ought to know how much he revelled in it.

His hand dropped from her wrists as he popped the fingers from his mouth, stealing a few moments more to lick them clean.  
“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked roughly, gravel thick in his tone as his thumb slid against her plump bottom lip, dragging it from one edge to the other  
She loosened his belt and dropped both his pants and his briefs to his knees, leaving only the tail of his shirt to drape over his erection, “I don’t think I could make myself any clearer, could I?”

He lifted her up the wall and her legs instinctively coiled around his waist as his cock slid against her wet heat while he rocked back and forth, passing it through her folds and slicking it with her arousal.

As he kissed her neck Felicity took his cock in her hand and pumped it lithely until he started moaning into the cusp of her shoulder. She guided him to her entrance, settling him there while her heel dug into the small of his back and pushed him forward, driving his shaft into her.

The sensation of the first push made Felicity bang her head into the wall behind it as Oliver nipped rabidly at her shoulder in a fashion that she would certainly wear tomorrow until he settled himself halfway in to enjoy the clench of her tight walls strangling his shaft.

Her body swelled with him making her breath wet with moans and her fingers tighten in the shorts of his hair, both actions silently begging him for more. He answered, pushing himself deeper in a relentless surge forward until his cock was completed seated inside her pulsing sex.

They kissed again, only this time with slow lips and curious tongues that dipped from one mouth to the other like swirling waves lapping between shore and sea as their eyelids grew heavy and their breaths even more so while relishing a moment where her small, warms hands lingered on his cheeks and his dominant hands gently folded around her lush hips.

While their lips were still entangled, Oliver eased an inch, two at most, out of her before he thrust back into her exquisite heat. He rebuked himself silently as a shockwave of glorious pleasure tightened the backs of his thighs before he stilled himself, knowing that if he didn’t slow himself down, this would be over in a time even a high school student on prom night would be embarrassed about.

But as the pulse of her body massaged around his straining cock and her nails teased the nape of his neck with tiny flicks and scrapes, Oliver gave himself over to her keening sighs for “more” that she kissed into his lips. He thrust forward, plunging himself deep into her insatiable clutch just as their lips broke apart and her cries echoed off every surface in the room. His rhythm continued to build, like a thundering stampede of cock and grunts, until the pictures hung on the wall nearby began to shake.

The only thing in his head is the word _fuck_. Every other thought process had vanished.  
The only thing he could focus on was the way she rode him, meeting his every thrust with a tight squeeze in that magnificent depth.

He looked over her body, watching the way she arched and writhed, alabaster skin against a dark, almost mechanical feature wall of steel grey. He noted the way her slender arms moved with him before one hand fell to his shoulder and latched into the fleshy muscles with a brutality that had Oliver glazing over with delirium. Her skin was shimmering with perspiration, her eyes tempestuous and mesmerising and when he caught only a glimpse of his reflection in her deep pools of blue, he could only imagined just how frenzied he must look.

Her bottom lip was coloured scarlet where her teeth had grazed their tracks. Her hair was a mess of fallen tendrils that bounced off her shoulders while her breast sat high up her chest, squeezed tight against him.

Every inch of him wanted to come, but with whatever faculties he still possessed he stopped himself, _just barely._ When her brows pinched inwards, bewildered at the sudden halt, his hands dropped from her waist and grabbed at her luscious rear. He must have squeezed because Felicity groaned loudly before she laughed with so much candour that Oliver couldn’t help but squeeze her ass cheek a second time just to elicit the same response.

He kicked open the door to her room and dropped her playfully onto the bed, slipping his cock out of her with an unexpected pop. Her legs spread and his fingers ran through the wetness at the top of her thighs as a smile tucked up the corner of his mouth; she looked absolutely ravished, _and he had done that._

She sat up and took his cock without warning into her mouth, practically swallowing half his length as she ran his head over the back of her throat.  
“Fuck, shit, fuck,” he whimpered as his knees trembled at the sudden, powerful, sensation that overtook him.  
Her eyes were wide and trained on him as she fed him in and out of her mouth, tasting both their flavours melded together. Her tongue licked and teased his head as his fingers absently combed through her hair until he was right on the cusp of coming in her mouth.

But he wasn’t ready to end it this way.

He took a step back and his cock slid from her mouth, bouncing rigidly in the air once it popped free of her lips.  
“You’re very good at that,” he panted, his cock aching to be touched, but needing to be left if he had any hope of not blowing himself right there and then.  
“I like to think so,” she smiled wickedly as she scraped her finger across his slit, stealing a few remnants of pre-cum that she plucked off with lick of her impish tongue.

She crawled back on her knees towards the middle of the soft mattress that dipped underneath her before she teased the ends of the sash that belted her robe. With a coy smile Felicity tugged both ends at the same time and the robe floated from her body like a feather, leaving her beautifully naked and open to his hungry gaze.

He stepped towards the bed before a _smack_ of her pink lips halted him.  
“Lose the jacket,” she coquettishly ordered.  
He did, and it was on the floor within seconds.  
She tapped a dark-tipped nail against her natural lip, “And the shirt.”  
He loosened his tie and lifted the collar of his crisp white shirt as Felicity watched on, an eager smile flirting with the tips of her mouth and a playful glint twinkling in her eyes, before she dragged a single finger down the centre of her body.

He went to lift the tie over his head. “Leave the tie,” she instructed and his hands fell away, immediately bending to her will.  
With his lips forming a full smile, Oliver peeled his shirt open, button by button, until it dropped to the floor.  
“Jesus, fuck,” she cursed through a sigh, “that’s what you've been hiding underneath all those suits,” she laughed with a frisky and sensuous laughter that made his cock twitch of its own volition.

He looked like cut marble, freshly washed and glistening in the gauzy light that streamed in through the floor to ceiling window. She had guessed from his broad shoulders that he was no slob under his clothes but the something of Greek God standing in front of her, comically in his pulled-up socks and his thin black Italian-silk tie, was more than she had expected.

Her fingers toyed with the end of his tie, wrapping it around her finger until she tugged him forward and he fell onto the bed, bridging his body over hers.  
“Now let's see what trouble we can make Oliver the divorce lawyer,” she said with an unmistakable grin. He didn't even correct her.

He spread her legs wider with his knees and stroked a single digit through her slick stream. The implode she felt was immediate as Felicity writhed against the mattress, balled her hands up into fists in the linen and screwed her eyes closed. Her clit was tight and sensitive and each deliriously slow sweep that solitary digit made had Felicity’s body aching for the fullness she knew he could give her.

“I appreciate the sentiment,” she panted as her eyes flung open, “but the foreplay is unnecessary right now.” Her words were staggered as she struggled to regulate her breathing, and she found herself gasping for air when he pinched her clit between his knuckles and ran the slightly rough pad of his thumb over its peak.

“Fuck,” she keened while her shoulders lifted off the bed, and as they lowered she managed a husky, “You’re very good at that.”  
“I'd like to think so,” his smile mimicked the same wickedly deviant one she had given him moments ago, and that wasn’t lost on her.  
Her clit was throbbing under his touch before she stilled his hand, “another time,” she purred, knowing she needed to be filled as her empty walls tightened around his vacancy, “show me another time.” His eyes rose up her body and his tongue absently stroked his lip, “but for now, how about you just fuck me, oookay?”

He’d never had a proposition like that before, or one that he reacted so quickly to as he hooked his hands under her knees, slid her closer and slammed his cock inside her, impaling her body onto his.  
She shook and her body trembled around his slick shaft as her fingers slalomed down his chest, silently promising to discover each valley and mountain with her tongue, _another time._

He threw himself into the act, relentlessly thrusting his pulsing shaft in a frenzy that had the headboard thumping into the wall with a monotonous _thud_ , until Felicity unspooled her hands from the sheet and pulled down on the lip of it.

“FUCK, OLLL-LUH-VER,” she desperately howled.  
He paused, but that was met with a frustrated look and a bleated, “Fuck, keep going, don’t stop.”  
When he'd reached his stride once again and her knuckles had turned white around the bevelled edge of the headboard, she chanted a tremulous, “Fuck, yes, fuck.”

Her inhibitions made him wild and spurred him on until they were bucking and thrusting so wildly that the bed was shaking and a bottle of water on the table beside them toppled to the floor.

She craned her neck and took his lips unexpectedly just as her knees locked into his waist, her breath hitched in her throat and her climax exploded in a warm blanket around his cock. And when her tongue playfully coiled around his and her hollowed cheeks sucked him into her mouth, it was all he needed to dissolve into pleasure as ribbons of release jerked from his throbbing shaft.

When they finally broke for air, he wanted to kiss her again, long and slow while he enjoyed the feeling of her body pulsing through the last few tremors of her climax but…he didn’t get a chance.

“Felicity, honey I’m home,” the unmistakable voice of her mother called into the apartment followed by the _bang_ of the front door closing.  
As though a hundred volt shock had been jabbed directly into his bare ass, Oliver leapt off the bed in a flummoxed state that made him crash to ground and left him spread on his back, naked (apart from the socks and tie) staring up at a white ceiling.

“Shit.” Felicity slid off the bed and stepped over Oliver as the clip of heels approached.  
For his part, the wet behind the ears attorney, was rendered completely motionless, as though he had been tranquilised and his body was no longer his to control. He could hear every sound, including the deafening sound of his heart almost charging out of his chest, but he was utterly powerless to move, entirely frozen in the knowledge that his _only_ client was going to walk into her daughter’s bedroom and find him shamelessly naked with his rigid cock like a flagpole bobbing in the wind and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

Felicity threw on her robe and met her mother at the door of her room, holding it tight against her side.  
“I thought we could order take out and watch a few movies, you in?” Donna chatted completely oblivious to Oliver's pants and briefs that they had carelessly left on the hallway floor, or the shoes he’d carefully removed near the front door.  
Felicity pushed her thighs together, consciously aware of how wet they were and half expecting them to squelch in the process, “I’m kind of busy at the moment,” she remarked as her hand straightened the shoulder of her robe.  
It was then that Donna finally noticed Felicity’s red lips, grazed with a beard burn, the distressed hair and the skewed robe.  
“Oh god, you have,” she leaned in and fruitlessly tried to take a peek, “a visitor?” she winked with an open mouth.  
A bobbed nod. “Yeah.”  
“Oh well, I’ll just go out and get my nails done and entertain myself,” she happily prattled, “Is three hours enough?”  
Another nod.  
“That’ll be fine.”  
Donna smiled as she touched Felicity’s cheeks, “Good for you, one of us Smoak women ought to be getting a right good fucking,” she cheered, like only her mother could., “If you get hungry there is food in the fridge,” Donna added before she turned on her magnificently high magenta heels and clipped right back the way she had come.  
“Thanks, I’ll be sure to let him know,” Felicity called out as she watched her mother pause at the open front door.  
“Alright hon, have fun,” Donna waved as she left, closing the door behind her.

Felicity kicked her bedroom door closed just as Oliver finally regained his ability to move and pulled himself off the floor.  
“How’s your head?” she asked as she pulled the elastic from her hair and shuffled a hand through her tresses.  
Oliver rubbed the back of his head down to the nape of his neck with a sheepish grimace. _Hardly his finest moment._

“I can’t believe you told her,” he remarked as he gathered his clothes from the end of the bed and pressed them into his groin.  
“Told her what? That her daughter has sex?” Felicity chuckled as she continued to use her fingers like a comb, untangling the mess of bed hair, “You’ve met my mother right? She would be worried if I _wasn’t_ having sex.”  
“I need to go, this wasn’t professional,” Oliver lamented, frustration etched in the lines of his brow.  
She touched his elbow and his body relaxed into her with a silent sigh, “You’re not my lawyer Oliver,” she reminded him, “and you’re not breaking any ethical codes.”  
_Still_ , “I shouldn’t,” he breathed, regretting every syllable those words possessed.  
“Okay, fine,” she said with a shrug as she turned her back to him, unfastened her robe and shook it from her body before she rested her chin on her shoulder and looked back at him, “but I’m going to take a shower,” she took two steps towards her private bathroom, the sway of her hips almost feline, “You can either join me or you can leave,” she stopped at the doorway and turned her body against it, “but you should know, I really enjoy giving blowjobs in the shower.”

There really wasn’t a choice to make.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Authors note: as you may or may not know I have been asked on previous occasions if I have a kofi account where people can pass me an appreciation for the fics that I write, I don't (and won't).
> 
> Rather, today (and any day really) I ask that instead you consider a donation to a charity, any charity that is doing a job where humanity has fucked up. A charity that helps the most vulnerable among us, animals, children, the lost and forgotten.
> 
> Do that.  
> They need it more than I do xox.


	4. Roxanne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm baaaaack. Xox

 

“I should go,” Oliver remarked as he ran his hand through his wild hair, still damp at the tips from the shower.  
Felicity took another bite of frosted flakes as she stood with her back in the bedroom doorway and one foot braced against it. “You said that an hour ago,” she laughed once she’d finished her mouthful.  
Oliver, smile threaded on his lips, sunk in closer while his eyes wandered her smooth skin, barely covered by her robe. “This time I mean it.”  
She laughed, bright and bubbly, a strange paradox of sorts to her dark tresses, deep ebony eyeshadow and pearlescent black nails. Felicity really was the walking reality that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.  
She moved her shoulder and shrugged just enough so that her dark robe slipped off her slender shoulder and exposed her silky, ivory skin. Oliver wet his lips as his eyes traversed across her shoulder to the scarlet love bite he’d left at the base of her neck.  
“You said that last time too,” she breathed as she turned to face him.

Her robe was barely covering her left breast and Oliver hummed through the arousal that teased his cock as his eyes slalomed down her body, mapping out each and every part he'd kissed. He couldn’t imagine the last time he'd had sex like that, in fact, if he decided to be honest about it, he wasn’t sure he ever had.

“So,” she popped her lips before she hung the spoon briefly between them as she walked back towards the bed, “Do you call the last two hours one sex event or multiple times?” she asked casually after she dragged the spoon out from between her lips.

Oliver wrestled his crumpled shirt onto his shoulders and started buttoning. “I suppose it would be considered all part of the same evening.” He wrapped the tie around his neck and blindly tied it. “If this was a crime spree it would be counted as a single event,” he smirked as he smoothed down his shirt collar over the loop of his tie.  
Felicity sat her bowl on the bedside table before she found her jeans tucked under the side of the bed and pushed each leg into them.  
“Why do you ask?” Oliver queried as he scouted the floor for his pants. He knew that he’d collected them from the hall after their ‘shower’ but he’d lost them again at some point during the doggy style against the arm of the chair in the corner of her bedroom.

Felicity wiggled into her jeans and fastened them under her robe before she unbelted it and let the silky fabric glide to the floor. She looked over her bare shoulder as she padded towards the bathroom. She disappeared just as Oliver found his pants and proceeded to fold each foot into the same. She returned a moment later pulling a loose grey cotton tee down over her breasts, her nipples tenting under the floaty fabric as it stopped just above her navel.

He tore his eyes away from the faded picture of an eagle clutching a rose in it’s talons as he tucked his shirt into his pants and fastened them.  
“I just needed to know what to write in my diary under ‘deflowering’,” she answered, deadpan and without blinking.

Oliver cracked a smile, expecting her too as well, but when seconds past and she hadn't, he choked it back and spluttered out a trembled, “Fuck.”  
He stumbled forward, his stomach in his throat and his eyes turbulent seas of turquoise. “This was your first...Jesus...fuck... I... we....you.”  
He couldn’t finish a coherent thought let alone a sentence.  
He never thought to ask.  
Never thought to check.  
_Jesus Christ, he’d gone in hard against the armchair, pounding like a jackhammer._  
“I’m so sorry. If I had have known.” His cheeks felt like fire and his gut ached with the knots that tightened inside it.  
“What?” she asked sweetly, her rosy cheeks and slightly pink lips now like a sinful thought to Oliver, “You would have put some petals on the bed?”  
He shook his head, but he couldn’t articulate any more than that. He would have gone slower, checked it was what she wanted.

The colour had drained from his face and he looked like he was about to keel over.  
She’d had her fun.  
“Oliver, I’m kidding,” she teased as the back of her hand slapped his arm.  
For a moment he’d thought he might faint.

“You know what I did in the shower, do you honestly think a first timer could do that?”  
He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry out of sheer relief.  
“That was cruel,” he muttered as he shrugged on his jacket.  
Felicity floated onto her tiptoes to where Oliver stood, grouchy, with a smile brimming across her face. She patted his chest with one hand as the fingers on the other playfully pulled up one side of his mouth into a tortured smile. “Oh come on, your face was hilarious,” she jested, “I really should have taken a photo. You were terrified.”  
He took her hand from his face. “I was worried.”  
Her brows furrowed for a second, amused but a little perplexed. “About my virginity?”  
“About you,” he answered within seconds of the question, but took a moment before he elaborated, “About maybe I didn’t check you were okay, about what you wanted.”

“Oliver,” she brushed back hair from his face, grazing his temples with her nails, “I wanted exactly what I got and got exactly what I wanted.”  
“What are we doing here?” Oliver asked poignantly.  
She slipped her hand from his. “Letting off steam, scratching an itch,” she prattled as she tried in vain to read the crinkled lines across his forehead. “Does it matter?”  
He pressed a finger into his brow. “It should matter, I should have...”  
She cut him off with a kiss, a hard and deep one that found Oliver needing to brace his back against the wall as it evolved into a wild cabaret of gnashing teeth and sword-fighting tongues until she pulled back just as suddenly as she had launched into the kiss, leaving them both breathless.  
“Stop saying ‘I’,” she corrected, the smile all but drained from her lips, “like I didn’t have a hand in what we did. I’m not some easily led little naive girl. We're both adults. We wanted to have sex. We had sex. Multiple times. That’s it.”  
He nodded like a bobble head in the back window of a car before her smile returned and she tousled a hand through her ebony locks before twisting it up into a messy knot at her crown.

“That’s it?” He didn’t know whether to be elated that she wasn’t imposing strings – _which should have been every career-focused bachelor’s dream_ – or to be mildly insulted that she didn’t see anything ‘beyond’ with him.  
He watched her expression carefully for any glimpse or flinch that might show she hadn’t meant what she’d said, but he never found any.  
“You have your life and I’m here for a little over a month before I head back to MIT, so yeah,” she nodded as she spoke, “that’s it. Of course, we can still have some fun while we’re here.” She smirked as she twisted her finger around the end of his tie.

“So can I call you?” he asked before she unravelled her finger and padded on bare feet out of her room and down the hall, Oliver following close behind.  
She opened the front door and leaned against the lip of it, “I’ll probably answer,” she teased before her tongue flirted with her lower lip.

He slipped out the front door with a smile indelibly painted across his expression as he filled his lungs with the cold afternoon air. Turning on the doorstep a sudden thought occurred to him, “About your mother,” he started, his smile still holding, but worry now also threaded through his eyes.  
Felicity tapped her nails on the doorframe, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell her about us.”  
“It’s not that I’m ashamed or,” he tried to explain but the words coming from his mouth just seemed to make the whole thing sound more sordid than it was, “it’s just she’s my, and you’re her.”  
_Nope. He couldn’t make this sound better, despite the fact it was generally a litigation lawyer’s job to polish up shit._

“Oliver,” she laughed, “I get it, it’s fine. Honestly, it’s better she doesn’t know.”  
Felicity knew that armed with that arsenal of knowledge, Donna Smoak would be planning a wedding and post-it noting nice baby names ‘ _just because_ ’. Felicity was in the mind for neither. “You can be Chris, some hot guy from a cafe if she asks.”  
Oliver breathed out his relief before he gingerly asked, “And what was Chris like?”  
She touched the scarlet mark on her neck as her eyes stayed locked to him, “Well he has a pretty nice cock, but his best feature would be his tongue.”  
“I’m sure Chris would…”  
“Oliver?”  
The sound of his name made his jaw clamp tight before he spun around to see Donna walking towards him. The instant thought about whether he could jump from the fourth floor landing and not break all the bones in his legs – or worse – briefly crossed his mind, but even if this was some insanely campy universe where he could make that jump unscathed, the reality was he’d already been identified.  
“Ms Smoak, I was just uh...” he fumbled for words as he tried to control his breathing and keep his sudden and nervous sweat from giving him away.  
_Put him in a Courtroom and he wouldn’t choke this bad._

“Oliver just dropped off some papers for you, they’re on the table,” Felicity remarked coolly, without so much as a tremble in her voice.  
“Oh, that’s very kind of you Oliver, I would have collected them,” the older woman crooned as she stopped a foot from him.  
“It’s no trouble, I was nearby,” Oliver added, finally managing to collect himself.  
Donna patted the grocery bag tucked under her arm, “Would you like to come in for a bite to eat?”  
Felicity subconsciously grazed her fingers over the path of love bites along her shoulder, which he’d left at her bidding.  
“Thank you, but no,” he replied with a coy smile, “I’ve already eaten, quite well, thank you.”  
He backed away from the door, still smiling, before Felicity tipped him a smile and a soft, “Goodbye.”

Once the door was closed and Oliver was walking back towards the stairwell, Donna plopped the brown bag onto the breakfast counter and fluffed up her silky, blonde hair.  
“I hope Oliver didn’t stumble into what I did,” she laughed as she tapped her fingers on the top of Felicity’s hair bun.  
“No, the coast was clear when he showed up,” Felicity replied with a dry smile.  
Donna shrugged, as though any answer would have placated her. “I bet he’s exceptional in bed,” she blurted, her thoughts unfiltered before they turned into words.

“I hadn’t given it much thought,” the younger Smoak replied while she rummaged through the shopping. “He’s not exactly my type.”

Felicity found a box of strawberry frosted pop tarts, opened them and handed one to her mother who took it with a gracious smile. “I know, I know,” Donna sighed, “you prefer them a little greasier with very little table manners and at least one facial piercing.” Felicity laughed, as did her mother, “But, it’s those quiet, button up types who wear chinos and boat shoes that you get a real party between the sheets with.”  
Felicity did nothing more than blink as she took a bite of her pop tart.  
“I’m serious,” Donna remarked as she flailed her pop tart around, “muscular thighs like he has will have you climbing up the walls.” She fanned herself with the breakfast treat, “If I was your age again,” she sighed as her eyes glazed over before Felicity snapped her back with a loud cough.

Donna returned to her senses with a soft shake of her head, “I mean if he wasn’t married. I’m a lot of things, but a homewrecker isn’t one of them.”  
Felicity rocked back on her heels, “He’s married?” she asked as casually as she could.  
“He wears a ring.”  
Felicity bobbed her head softly, despite knowing that Donna-Smoak-type women were, in essence, the reason he wore that band.

The older woman toed off her shoes while she finished the delectable treat with a smack of her Barbie-pink lips. “So how was your day?” she asked with a knowing smile.  
“Enjoyable.” Felicity winked as she plucked another pop tart from the box and headed towards her room, “I have some college stuff to work on but I’ll see you for dinner.”

“What’s his name at least?” Donna called out after Felicity disappeared down the hall.  
“Chris,” Felicity shouted back before she slipped into her room and closed the door behind her.

**< <<\-------->>>**

The weekend had gone by with very little contact besides a brief text exchange on Saturday that ended when Felicity said she was heading ‘out of contact’ for a few hours. He hadn’t heard from her since and while he had debated starting up the discourse again, he hadn’t and rather he’d spent most of Monday worried that Felicity was having some regrets over their tryst. At least until around 4pm, when he got a call from reception advising that there was a Miss _Felicity_ Smoak there to see him.

“Are you sure it’s okay for me to be here?” Felicity asked as the lift cycled through the floors.  
All the meeting rooms were occupied and while Felicity had just wandered over from her stint at Palmer Tech to drop back some signed documents, Oliver wasn’t willing to just have this as a passing meeting; there were things that needed to be said.  
“It’s fine,” Oliver assured her, despite that fact that generally it was frowned upon to take clients (or their daughters) to private offices, there were a few things his last name afforded him – and one of those things was the ability to stretch certain acceptable practices.

Jenny looked up from her post, but said nothing as Oliver guided Felicity into his office and closed the door. The secretaries needed some new material to gossip about around the water cooler and he was happy enough to provide it for now.

Felicity’s eyes roved around the spacious office and out the pristine windows to the bird’s eye view of the bustling street below.

He waited for the door to click before he turned and pressed his shoulders into the warm oak veneer. “Did you have a nice weekend?” Oliver asked, holding his more intrusive questions at bay.  
“Define nice,” she answered before she blew a pink bubble and popped it with a black nail.  
Oliver lifted off the back of the door and strode deeper into the room until he stopped a few feet from her with his knuckles brushing the side of his desk as he watched her drink in the view.

“Something giving pleasure or satisfaction,” he remarked, each word tinged with a gravelled rasp.  
She turned and stepped closer, closing the gap between them to barely a foot. “That sounds like sex,” she hummed before she returned to rolling both her jaw and her lips as she chewed the strawberry flavoured gum.  
He kept a smile flickering at the crease of his lips as he answered, “I suppose some people would correlate the two.”  
Her thick, dark lashes blinked up at him, flaring across the slightly bronzed highlight of her arched brow. “Are you asking me if I had sex on the weekend Oliver?” she questioned bluntly as her fingers brushed down her neck.

His eyes trailed down with her fingers until they circled the brand he’d left, now a faded port wine shade. He didn’t know how to answer, even though undeniably that was the question he’d been toying with in his head. Friday had been reckless on so many different levels but having her there, standing in front of him, he was able to admit – at least to himself – he would do it all again.

A breathy laugh broke the silence that had fallen between them before Felicity walked backwards around Oliver’s near-immaculate desk and dragged his chair out from under it. “I didn’t,” she said simply as she sunk down into his chair and kicked her feet up onto his desk. The patent black shoes caught the last fingers of the falling sun, drawing Oliver’s eye towards them before they climbed up her curvy legs, naked despite the wintery weather, at least to the mid-thigh where a pleated black skirt then obstructed his view.

He tore his eyes away from her creamy legs, forcing them out the window to regain his composure before he propped himself up against the corner of his desk, his fingers within reach of her heels.

“Do you regret fucking me Oliver the divorce lawyer?” she quipped as she mindlessly picked a spec of dirt out from under her nail, “because if you did, you should just say so.” She blinked up at him and waited with eyes that dared him to be truthful.  
“I don’t,” he answered honestly. Regret wasn’t what he was feeling because regret insinuated that one wouldn’t do it again, but Oliver was self-aware enough to know that faced with the same choice, he absolutely would. Friday had felt _fucking amazing_ and yet there was still something that bothered him.  
“But there is still something bothering you.” She read his mind as she kicked the toe of her shoe into his forearm.  
His hand raised off the desk and instinctively came to rest on her ankle. “For starters, we didn’t use protection,” he lamented as his fingers splayed across her surprisingly warm skin.  
“I’ve been on birth control since I was sixteen,” Felicity remarked, then added with a shrug, “to regulate heavy flows, not because my mother thought I was at risk of ending up on MTV.”  
He hadn’t needed to know that, but her offhanded nature had him smiling all the same.  
“College has free screening for any STIs and I’m a sucker for free stuff,” she joked as she wheeled a little closer, making Oliver’s hand slip a little further up her leg, his thumb soon stroking her inner calf. “I’m also going to bet you’re quite fastidious when it comes to the same,” she added.

She wasn’t wrong.  
“But if you’d like to end this casual thing we just started,” she paused as she wheeled the chair in front of him and dropped her feet either side of his, “then that’s okay too.”  
She looked up his chest to his eyes, deep and thoughtful before her fingers teased his silver belt buckle and her teeth curiously nibbled on her plump lower lip.  
He could feel his breath hitching in the back of his throat and when he spoke his voice was deep and almost guttural, “I don’t want to end it.”

He probably should.  
But Felicity hadn’t asked that, she had asked if he wanted to; and that answer was resolute.

She loosened his belt and the sound of the buckle falling against the side of his navy wool-blend pants had Oliver gasping into his fist before she carefully threaded out the button from the waistband and peeled the zip down. His pants slouched just enough to expose the definite erection sheathed behind black cotton briefs.

“I don’t know this town very well,” she spoke quietly as her index finger traced his throbbing erection making Oliver bite down on his fist, “so what is there to do around here?”  
He watched her large blue eyes roll suggestively over his body as she sat up in the chair and wet her lips slowly.

The realisation that his secretary was just outside and he was unsure if his last name could dissipate the kind of misconduct he was almost certain they were about to engage in if they got caught, Oliver gulped down his every inclination to _go with it_ and jostled up his trousers, fastening them quickly so he didn’t listen to the little demon on his shoulder cursing him out.

“I see,” she bantered as she leaned back in his chair.  
Oliver’s finger brushed the underside of her chin and raised it until their eyes met. “Trust me, it’s not that I don’t want to,” he rasped, “in fact the list of things I _want_ to do with you in this room is quite extensive, but we can’t.”  
“Why?” she asked simply. It wasn’t a question laced with anything more that genuine curiosity.  
“This is my job, my career,” he sighed, “what I’ve worked for.”  
“What you want?”  
Yes.  
The answer should have been simple, but as she rose from the chair with the question still hanging unanswered in the air, he couldn’t give it. This career path had been chosen for him since before he could speak. There had never been any doubt that he would follow in his father’s footsteps and he’d somehow always just been okay living in a world where it was a ‘given’.  
“Of course,” he finally managed to answer, though it felt distasteful against his tongue.

“So, what does Oliver the primed attorney do to unwind if it isn’t getting a blow job from a nineteen year old in his office?” she asked, an animated smile making her full plum-toned lips look even larger.  
He followed her steps towards the window again, watching as the sun disappeared behind a horizon of skyscrapers.  
“There is a tenpin bowling,” he offered with an offhanded shrug.  
Felicity laughed softly as she turned to look at him with curious eyes. “Do I look like the kind of girl who likes tenpin bowling?”  
He stiffened his shoulders and raised a single brow up towards his hairline, “I don’t like to judge.”  
She straightened his tie and flattened down the lapels of his jacket. “Fair play,” she jested with a luminous smile. “But how about we do something else?”

He watched the pink-toned fingers of the sunset warm her cheeks as they filled with a smile. “What do you have in mind?” he asked while his fingers gently brushed over the dancing light.  
“Meet me in the Starling Royal Hotel’s bar at 7pm,” she stepped back from him and walked with a feline sway of her hips towards the door before she turned just as she reached it, “and be someone else for the night.”  
“Who?” he questioned, perplexed.  
She shrugged softly as her hand reached for the doorknob, “You decide.”

**< <<\-------->>>**

It was a few minutes before 7pm as Oliver, dressed in navy peacoat and an open matte-black shirt, brushed a light dusting of snow off his shoulders in the Hotel foyer. He hadn’t really understood her closing words to “be someone else for the night” but he had ditched the formality of a suit and opted for slate grey pants and a naked neck, much to Thea’s incorrigible questioning about where _exactly_ he was going.

The air was pleasantly warm as he strode into the dimly lit bar, decorated shades of burgundy and chrome, so he shuffled the peacoat from his shoulders and draped it over the back of an empty chair as he folded up the sleeves of his shirt to just above his elbows. His eyes roamed around the bar and studied every feminine silhouette he could see. He checked his Breguet watch for what would be the seventh time since leaving through the revolving doors of his apartment building. He was early, but only by a few minutes.

He decided on taking a seat by the bar as his throat was calling out for something to warm it after breathing in the chilly air during the ten minute, brisk walk. As he walked closer to his destination, he notice a slender blonde dressed in a luxuriant fawn-gold dress that scooped so low down her back that if it dropped half an inch lower he would know the colour of her panties. His gaze traversed the deep arch of her back as she idly brushed her tumble of blonde curls over her svelte shoulders.

There was something instinctively familiar about it and Oliver found himself halted in the middle of the walkway as he tried to decipher the pull the stranger had on him.

And then she turned her head towards him and it all made sense. Behind beautifully fanned lashes and carefully sculpted black eyeliner sat stunning sapphire eyes that had already become something of a fixture in his mind.

It was Felicity.

He closed the gap between them with only four steps. “Felicity?” he asked warmly as his eyes were drawn to her cherry lips.  
“I think you have me confused with someone else,” she replied, her voice softer and a little more reserved. “My name is Megan.”  
Oliver nodded as he propped his elbow against the bevelled edge of the maple bar. “Megan,” he repeated like a cloudy breath rolling over his lips, “that’s a very pretty name.”  
She pinned her golden hair behind her ear as her slightly rouged cheeks puffed up with a smile. “Thank you…” she paused, waiting for him to offer his name.  
“Chris,” he said before he glanced at the empty barstool just behind him. “Is this seat taken?”  
He understood what she had meant now.  
_Become someone else._

She took a sip of her white wine, patting her crimson lips together before she twisted in her seat and nodded down to the empty stool. “I’ll be honest with you Chris, if you tell me this dress would look great on your bedroom floor, I’m going to tell you I need to powder my nose and I won’t return.”  
He lifted himself onto the stool, “I appreciate the honesty Megan.”

She settled her elbow onto the bar and dropped her cheek towards her shoulder which was lightly dusted in goosebumps. “Well, I do like to start off every conversation with one truth.”  
Oliver ordered a scotch, neat, from the bartender, averting his eyes from her beauty for only the few seconds he needed to. “In that case I think I owe you something honest in return.

Felicity turned completely on the chair so that her feet, clad in strappy black heels, were now pointed at him, “I’m listening.”

His drink appeared and Oliver took a sip, letting it warm his throat and coat it with a sharp bite. “I’m very attracted to you, I think you look stunning and if the night ends with my name on your lips then I think we could both be satisfied.”  
Her eyes dropped to her lap and for a moment Oliver considered taking it back, but when she looked back up, she was smiling. “That’s very forward of you.” Her voice was smooth and velvety and Oliver’s ears drunk it in like an addiction.  
“I’m sorry,” he said candidly.  
Her fingers floated through her hair and he couldn’t help but notice how the golden tresses looked so warm against her ivory skin. “I didn’t say it was a bad thing,” she purred.

Her story was a simple one and Oliver listened as she carefully unravelled it. She was in her mid-20s, in Starling one night before she flew to Shanghai in the morning without a return ticket. She blushed as she spoke or when his eyes lingered on her too long, and even more so when she admitted, on glass number two that she had hoped to run into an ex who frequented the bar in some foolish hope to show him he was missing out by not having her in his life.  
“Utterly foolish,” she remarked as she finished telling Oliver the story of how he had broken up with her for being too serious, and he’d found his way into the bed of a woman, a yoga instructor, far worldlier than her. “She’s gorgeous and I’m…”  
“Exquisite,” Oliver interrupted, “and your ex-boyfriend is clearly dumber than rocks to let you go.”  
She thanked him with a smile as her finger worked the rim of her wine glass. “What’s your story Chris?”  
He shrugged, “I hate yoga.”  
She laughed, genuinely.  
The truth was Oliver didn’t know what to say, she had created such a deep story but all he wanted to know was something about _Felicity_ not the character she was portraying.  
“I’d rather hear your story,” he stated without irony.  
Felicity’s brows pinched inward bemused, “You already did.”  
He placed his arm on the bar, putting his fingers barely a hair’s breadth from her wrist. “Not Megan’s story, Felicity’s.”  
She laughed a soft sigh behind closed lips as her head rocked slowly back and forth. “You don’t really get how this game works do you?” she playfully ribbed as she brushed the pads of her fingers against his sinewy forearm, feeling the raised veins that twisted there.  
“I do,” he rasped, leaning his body a little closer to hers until her wrist rested in his open palm. “I’m just more interested in knowing you.”  
  
Her nails cut tiny scratches into the smooth underside of his forearm as she crossed her legs at the knees and spliced them between his legs. “I don’t have a story,” she breathed, barely above a whisper, “because I’m still writing it.”

A smile before she placed her other hand on his knee. “Haven’t you ever wanted to be someone else, just for a night, live a life that wasn’t yours?” she asked.  
“Like an actor, disenchanted with the Hollywood life who is looking for something real?” Oliver offered with a smoky voice and eyes that never strayed from hers.  
“Now you’re getting it,” she chortled, “and I can be the southern belle who’s wide eyed and never had an orgasm,” she leaned a little closer, “just so you can teach me.”  
“The reclusive billionaire and the high class escort.”  
She tossed her hair over her shoulder, “I’ll be the billionaire, you be the escort,” she laughed.  
He nodded with a lively smile, “I like that idea better.”

She pushed her fingers under his rolled up shirt, feeling the hard mound of his large bicep. “The sergeant and the girl he meets the night before he ships off,” she proposed as her thumb sunk into his arm.  
He sucked in air when her nail imbedded in his flesh, a strangely delectable pain he’d gladly take again if offered. “Does he die tragically?”  
“Probably.”  
“That’s dark,” he teased before he licked his lips watching hers twist into a smile.  
“That’s cinematic,” she presented with a shrug.

“The bank robber and the pretty longue singer?” he suggested as he let his palm rest on the curve of her knee, with just his thumb ducking under the hem of that scandalously sheened dress.  
“Make me unwittingly engaged to some mob boss and it should be the 1940s,” she added, her voice slightly flustered as she could feel her blood warming beneath her skin while she rocked the seat of the stool up against her aroused heat.  
Oliver watched her carefully, noting the slight rose colour bleeding down her chest and disappearing like fingers down between her swelling breasts. He leaned in a little closer and his whole hand slipped under the hem of her dress. “He should be significantly older than you.”  
“Probably with a disfigurement,” she added, breathily and stilted.

He lifted his other arm off the bar and coiled a finger through her silky hair, “Have you let him be with you yet?”  
She bit her lip and blew out a soft but desperate sigh, “No, I can’t stand the thought of it.”  
His eyes tethered to hers as she moved closer. “Do I fall in love with you?” he asked, his tone thin and rasped.  
“It seems likely.”  
“Some will say I’m the hero of the story, but really it’s you who saves me by loving an impish rogue.”  
Her fingers tickled into his unshaven jaw, their faces so close that they shared the same air.  
“Who doesn’t love an impish rogue?” she asked rhetorically before she slipped off her chair and offered Oliver her hand. He took it and stood. “It seems in all the stories we’ve laid out we’re star crossed lovers destined to be torn apart,” she hummed, her warmed tone teasing the throbbing between his legs. “So let’s make tonight count.”

**< <<\-------->>>**

They didn’t turn on the lights when they stumbled into the hotel room Felicity had booked, relying instead on the City’s twinkling lights to show them a hazy path to the bed. Oliver fell onto it first after a soft push from her, but his feet soon settled back onto the ground as he sat up on his elbows.

She raised one arm coyly and slowly unzipped her dress from there before she shimmied it down her body. She was braless and the shadows licked up her body while the light danced against her alabaster skin.

“How do you want me?” she asked, while her fingers trickled down between her pert breasts, topped with rosy and coiled nipples.  
Oliver sat closer to the edge of the bed and anchored his hands to her shapely hips before he pulled her nearer. He gently kissed her belly which rolled subtly under the faint grazing of his scruff while her fingers raked through his short hair. His mouth reached the lace waistband of her panties and he breathed her heady aroma in with a guttural moan before his thumbs hooked over either side and he carefully peeled the wafer-esque clothing down her silken thighs.

The thin wisp of fabric fell from her knees and Felicity kicked them off her ankles before Oliver’s hands widened her stance while she teetered on stilettos above him.

He looked up her naked body with his chin sunk into her mound and his hands cupping her ass. “You can leave the wig on if you want, but everything else is you,” he growled before he kissed over her small thatch of hair and dipped the tip of his tongue between her crease.

She nodded while her eyes blinked rapidly and before her head lolled back when Oliver delved his tongue deeper into her folds, slicing them open and blowing warm air against her sweltering sex. She hummed salaciously as her fingers twisted into the roots of his hair while he licked the flat of his tongue fluidly from perineum to her tingling clit, all while breathing in her provocative scent.

Methodically he traced her lines with the tip of his tongue feeling her shake in his grasp as his palms kneaded into her rounded ass before they dropped down the back of her thighs, tickling a wanton moan from her mouth. With one hand Oliver spread her labia and gently swept his tongue across the crescent hood of her clit while his thumb occasionally brushed light strokes across her sensitive pearl.

As her arousal increased and her breathing became haphazard and weak, Oliver tenderly ran his finger through her slick heat, coating the same in her thin juices before he slipped one digit into her pulsing entrance. Felicity’s hips bucked into the pleasurable sensation as her head flipped forward and her tresses curtained down Oliver’s neck.

He languidly sucked her clit into his mouth and rolled it achingly-slow between his wet lips, now painted in her as he added a second finger and slid both all the way to the knuckle.

“More,” she pleaded in a breathy gasp as her head swayed above his, her back arching in towards him.  
He obliged by patting her clit with his tongue as his fingers pressed upwards into her G-spot. Her legs were becoming like jelly and he could feel her shaking against his face before he carefully lowered his back to the bed and took her with him.

Now kneeling above him with one of his hands like a seat on her rear, Felicity balanced on her fingertips which were buried in the airy and embossed linen bedspread.

Her hips began to roll in small circles that Oliver encouraged with grunts and a tightening grip on her smooth ass, until Felicity was riding his face with the vigour of a playful filly.

His fingers slipped out from inside her but the void was soon filled with his curious tongue that stretched and twisted against her vibrating walls. He was completely surrounded by her taste and her scent and his hedonistic groans simply begged her to keep going.

Felicity trembled above him, her body so close to the edge that she was unsure if she could now stop the avalanche. “Oh-luh-ver,” she chanted as she sat up a little and dug her nails into cusps of his shoulders, “I’m going to…”  
She looked down at him, his eyes wide and desperate, perhaps even more so than her own.  
“Please, Felicity, Please,” he mumbled into her sex, eager to taste every deliciously intoxicating drip of her.

She came crying out his name unabashed and loud, dispersed between shrieks of pleasure and, while her walls were still pulsing through her climax, Oliver lifted her like a feather-down pillow and gently dropped her, still writhing in pleasure, on the bed beside him.

“Ready for more?” he whispered as he kissed the round of her heaving breast.  
Felicity's eyes were hazy and her breath was short and shallow as her body rode over the crashing waves of her orgasm and her walls crushed around air.  
“I don't think...I,” she tremored out the shaky words as she struggled to regain her composure.  
His tongue circled her nipple making her body arch off the bed while his free hand caressed her other breast. "You said we had to make the most of it," he smiled as his eyes wandered over her flushed chest.

Her lips were full and red where her teeth had dug trenches. Her throat was glowing with perspiration that glistened down her shoulders like a luminescent waterfall. Her cheeks were vividly red and her once perfect lines of black around her eyes were now slightly smudged. ‘Ravaged’ only began to describe it.

Her hips rolled off the billowy linen as she sought out some delicious friction. With one long sweep, Oliver's fingers drove down the side of her body and glided over her thigh before dipping between her sweltering folds.

She was wet and warm and she shook desperately as Oliver circled her entrance. “I need your express consent,” he teased, rolling his slightly rough pad over her hole.  
“Fuck, yes,” she sobbed, almost delirious with her need.

Oliver sunk his thick middle digit all the way to the knuckle in one smooth dive before curling the tip into her throbbing walls.

His mouth returned to her breast, licking and swirling her nipple with both the flat and the tip of his tongue while his chin grazed the underside. The room became heavy with her faint sighs and keening chants of syllables of his name. "Oh..Oh...Oh..."  
He thrust his finger deep into her, lifting her hips off the bed before he added a second digit. He pumped his fingers into her slick heat while he suckled her supple breasts.  
"Vuh. Vuh...ver," she cried out as her second, more fleeting but just as powerful, orgasm rocked her body like electricity down her spine.

His fingers stilled inside her, letting her body ride and grind into them as she pleased while her eyes screwed closed and her lips became a quiver of panted breaths.

He kissed her neck, relishing the way it felt warm against his lips as he gently coaxed her eyes open. “Another?” he whispered near her ear, adoring the way the notes of her flowery perfume blended perfectly with her own intoxicating aroma.

Felicity wasn’t sure she could take another rolling climax but with her eyes blown wide and her bottom lip snagged behind her teeth she nodded all the same. Her nerves were pulled taut like a bowstring and her sex felt like intense flames tortured every inch of it, but her body craved it and her mind was a fog of nothing but the thought of his long, thick cock filling her deliriously slow as her body clenched around him.

After sliding off the bed Oliver lithely dragged the tops of his fingers down her silky skin, moist with her sweat and littered with tiny goosebumps. Her body felt limp as he turned her onto her stomach until she bit back a moan when her sensitive heat brushed against the woven fabric, the friction of it undeniably intense and sending an ache down her thighs in electric prickles.

Her thighs squeezed together tightly, making her moan with undulation as her fists knotted in the blanket. Seconds of respite to settle down from the last climax turned into a minute before Oliver trickled his fingers down her back like a slow motion skier weaving down snowy slopes. He leaned over her and gently kissed a path down her spine before he slid an arm under her ribcage, just beneath her breasts, and lifted her torso off the mattress.

With her knees teetering on the edge of the bed and her toes digging holes in the plush carpet, Felicity blinked her eyes open, even though they only saw in hazy lights that twinkled outside the 25th floor bedroom window.

Once her vision cleared and her breathing had calmed, Felicity wriggled free from his grasp and crawled up the bed with a playful glint her in hooded eyes,

“Stripper,” she remarked with a finger pointed at him. “Client,” she finished, pointing the same finger back at her chest before she settled onto her heels and drew tantalizing circles around her budded nipples.  
Oliver started by toeing off his shoes and plucking his socks from each foot with a puckish smile threaded across his lips. He shucked his pants and kicked them near her crumpled dress without much fanfare before he deftly unbuttoned his shirt and left it to hang open. She crawled closer with a coquettish purr before she sat taller and brushed her lips between the gaping sides of his shirt. She kissed a slow and silent path down his smooth chest, making Oliver groan in pleasure and his skin sizzled beneath her provocation.

She reached his briefs and nipped at his prominent erection behind its cotton sheath before her fingers peeled his briefs down and his cock sprung free like a rigid diving board. Tiny beads of precum glistened in his slit which Felicity licked clean with a slurp and a smile.  
“Do I have to pay extra for that?” she teased as she guided his shirt down his burly arms which were built like the hump of a buffalo.  
Before he could answer, Felicity had pulled him onto the bed and wrestled herself onto his lap, sandwiching his erection between his stomach and her wet folds.  
“Felicity,” he groaned, virtually breathless.  
“Yes?” she hummed as her lips dropped to his naked chest.  
She hopped kisses across his brawny chest as she gently rocked over his shaft. Oliver grunted as the sensations sprung him towards what promised to be a quaking climax.  
“I need, stop,” he mumbled as his hands slowed her hips. Knowing that if she continued he would be cleaning come off his chest in a matter of minutes.  
With her hands on either side of his face she forced him to look at her. “Do you want to be inside me Oliver?”  
He nodded in her hands.  
“Do you want me to tell you how good it feels?”  
He nodded again, a little quicker.  
“Do you want me to cry out your name?”  
“Yes,” he rasped.  
She lifted off his throbbing cock and caught it in a tight grasp.  
“Say please,” she said with a smirk.  
He anchored his eyes to hers. “Please.”

She slid his head into her entrance and stilled it there for a few moments as her hips circled above him. Her nails clawed his washboard stomach as their eyes stayed tethered.  
“It feels so good,” she hummed as she slowly sunk him deeper.  
He tented his knees for her to lean back into as his hands gripped her waist.  
“I can feel you throbbing,” she breathed while she nestled his cock deep inside her. She tightened her walls, strangling his rod with each clench before she pinched his lower lip. “Can you feel that Oliver?”  
He nodded and she sighed a breathless, “good.”  
She began to ride him slowly at first, working him in and out of her clenching walls until her body instinctively quickened and his grip on her hips tightened.

She soon built a quick rhythm that had both of them teetering on the precipice of climax as they chased their needs with ragged breaths and stunted moans.  
“So good,” she chanted with a flirty smile before Oliver lifted his bottom off the bed and thrust her towards the ceiling. “Yes, that, fuck, that again,” she pleaded as she reached behind her back and between his legs to gently massage his balls into the palm of her hand, her finger running across his seam with delicate precision.  
“Fuck,” he cursed, so loud that it echoed off the plaster walls.  
“Do you like that Oliver, tell me you like it.”  
“I fucking love it,” he gritted, his eyes wild and his thrusts now a haphazard bucking.

Her knuckles smoothed over his perineum where the skin stretched taut as his eyes glazed over. As he neared climax, Felicity pressed her knuckles deeper, triggering his erogenous zone above and sending Oliver into overdrive as he came in long ribbons and strained moans.  
“Fuck, fuck,” he stammered as an entirely new sensation extended his pleasure until he was near sobbing.  
His warm spend coated Felicity’s walls and helped her topple over the edge moments later while her, as promised, cried out his name.

Making the moment last had been an understatement.

  
**< <<\-------->>>**

Nearly an hour later found them twisted in the pristine white sheets, with Oliver exploring each inch of her arched back as she sat up, hugging her knees to her chest and watching the world move around them in a blaze of city lights with the dim lamp beside the bed bathing the room in a warm amber. He sat up a little higher to press a soft kiss into the slope of her shoulder.

“I know this is just fun, but that doesn’t mean it’s only sex,” he whispered as his nose brushed against her dark hair, the blonde wig now on the floor near their strewn clothes.  
She twisted her shoulders to face him as a smile toyed with her full lips. “I don’t do family dinners or galas.”  
He laughed gently as his arm banded around her stomach and his lips scattered kisses over her arm. “I wasn’t suggesting either. I prefer to avoid those too.”  
“What did you have in mind?” she asked before her tongue absently, but provocatively, wet her lips.  
“Tonight,” he started with a sigh, “Room service and a terrible movie.”  
She contemplated his suggestion with a furrowed brow and pursed lips trying to disguise a smile before she answered with a coy, “Okay.”

“Give me a minute in the bathroom,” he simpered as he slid out from under the sheet, “then we'll order a feast.”  
Felicity found hers cheeks aching from smiling as she nodded. He padded across the room before he disappeared into the bathroom. Felicity scooted up the bed and nestled her shoulders into a puffy pillow before she scouted out the room for the remote.

She found it on the bedside table, sitting next to his phone. As though timed by fate itself, when she reached over to collect the remote, Oliver’s phone sprung to life. Ordinarily she would have never read it, but her eyes were right above it when the message scrolled across the top of the screen;

**Roxanne wants to know where you are? What do I tell her? You know how she gets, Oliver. She’ll know I’m lying.**

Felicity gulped down the breath that had lodged in her throat as she read the words and replayed them in her head. Before she could contemplate what to say to Oliver she had already untangled herself from the bed and thrown her panties and dress haphazardly on her trembling frame and collected her shoes and purse.

She didn’t quite reach the door before Oliver skipped out from the bathroom, his flaccid penis swaying with each step. He looked at the empty bed curiously before he swung around and found her reaching for the door handle.

“Is this part of the game?” he asked, somewhat innocently and definitely hopeful that it was.  
“I have to go,” she replied simply as she kept her eyes burrowed into the back if the door.  
He immediately sensed her hostility. “Is everything alright?” he asked as he walked closer.

She was going to say everything was fine, then she was going to leave, ignore any calls he made and pretend she hadn’t been foolish enough to buy the line that he wore a wedding ring simply as a rouse. If he chose to step out on his Roxanne, that was his shit decision to make, but she wasn’t going to be a willing, or even unwitting, pawn in that game.

That’s what she had hurriedly planned to do.  
Her mouth had others plans.  
“Who is Roxanne?” she asked pointedly as she turned to face him with glassy eyes and terse lips.


	5. Façade

Oliver looked bewildered, not like in the movies when the man has been caught with his pants down and he’s trying to come up with some sort of lie that would cover over what the girlfriend just walked in on; no, he looked legitimately bewildered and Felicity, for a moment, wasn’t sure what to think.

“How-“ he finally stumbled out the word as his hands tightened in the soft white towel covering his dignity.  
Felicity dropped a shoulder as she blew out a sigh. “Your phone,” she started as she pushed her chin towards where she had left the damning evidence, “it went off, I saw it.”  
She felt a sudden pang of guilt, but the truth was she hadn’t been snooping and _this_ , the girl that checks a guy’s messages, wasn’t her; but she also wasn’t the kind of girl who swept things under the rug and hid holes behind paintings.

Oliver followed her eyes towards the phone as a hand tore through his hair.  
“It’s not what you think,” he said abruptly as he jogged over to the bedside where his phone sat.  
Another sigh blew from her lips as she muttered, “what exactly do you think I think it is?” while she walked the rest of the way to the door and pulled it open.

She stepped out into the corridor with her blonde wig in one hand and her shoes dangling from the wrist of the other. Her once perfectly applied lipstick was now faded into the creases of her lips and her dress and hair were skewed in different directions. But she still smiled as a women in her late 40s looked her over with slightly curious eyes when they passed in the ambient-lit hall.

Oliver ran out after her, realising only after he’d made the three yard dash down the plush, carpeted hallway, that he was still only wearing a towel and a panicked smile.  
“Felicity wait,” he called out after her, flailing his phone around as the same curious woman took her time finding her hotel key card while she watched on.

She didn’t know why she did it, after all she was only a few feet from the elevator doors, or hell, even the stairwell, but Felicity stopped.  
“This should be good,” she muttered under her breath as she turned on the balls of her feet and arched a single brow at him, daring him to give it his best shot.

“The message was from Thea,” he panted as his fist clinched in the folded knot of his towel.  
She shrugged, she didn’t know whether he was asking or telling her, but either way, she didn’t know, she hadn’t noticed, “I don’t know. Who’s Thea?”  
“Thea is my sister, my younger, about to be estranged, sister,” he said with a half serious, gritted smile. Felicity didn’t say anything. “All you need is Google to prove that’s the truth, she’s _infamous_.”  
“Why are you telling me all this?” Felicity found herself lifting up onto her toes, instinctively trying to make herself just that little less smaller around him.  
“She’s just been suspended from her current, private high school and somehow insisted that she stay at my place.” He tried to hold his frustrations at bay but despite the love he had for his baby sister, his last threads of patience were beginning to wear thin; although that wasn’t squarely on Thea’s shoulders. They had been frayed for years, though his fixed smile and perfected facades would never attest to that truth.  
Felicity still didn’t understand what any of that had to do with Roxanne, whoever she was.  
He flicked through his phone and turned it around to face her with a photo on the screen. “Thea,” he sighed, pointing at the young girl with a half-cocked smile and eyes that held mischief and mayhem.  
“Okay,” Felicity shrugged as an older couple walked past them with broad smiles on their faces.  
“Could we, uh,” he pointed back towards the room as his near nakedness was becoming a spectacle.  
“I’m good here,” Felicity quipped, a wicked glint in her eye. She probably should have been more gracious and offered the man with the body of a mythical god and the tongue of an artist a little scrap of dignity by allowing this conversation to take place anywhere but here, drawing a crowd. She probably _should have_ ; but she didn’t.

Oliver took a deep and steady breath in, _fine they would have this discussion in the hallway then,_ “Thea, with Roxanne.” He pointed to a very pretty long-haired tawny kitten in his sister’s arms.

She choked back a laugh as she looked at him with an eyebrow raised as far up her forehead as it possibly could. “Roxanne is a kitten?” she gibed.  
Oliver furrowed his lips as he dropped his head to one side, “More of a Cat now, this was taken last Christmas, but yes, Roxanne is my cat.”

She shook her head, _that had to be the lamest excuse she’d ever heard._  
“You don’t believe me do you?”  
A pair of teenage girls appeared from the elevator down the hall and started giggling as they approached. “Could we please?” he practically begged for Felicity to retreat back into the room.

There was something about the pleading in his eyes that made her soften just enough to relent and nod him back towards the room.

He closed the door behind him and she watched the relief drop from his shoulders as they relaxed with that _click_.

She swung her shoes like a pendulum as she let his story sink in. “So you’re telling me Roxanne is a cat?” She eyed him cautiously as she expected to see a smirk shake from his lips or a wayward blink to give him away, but she got neither. He was either an exceptional liar, or he was telling the truth.

He blushed, embarrassed, “Yes. Thea bought her as a Christmas present last year, I think the card read something like ‘You finally got a pussy for Christmas’.” Felicity burst out laughing before she clamped her hand to her mouth and just her chest was left shaking with laughter. “Thea thought it was pretty funny too.”  
“Why would you call her Roxanne?” she asked from behind her hand as her eyes sparkled with amusement.  
Oliver took another long and considered breath in as his cheeks flushed a deeper scarlet. “She had already named it because giving it a woman’s name made me seem less, uh,” he rubbed his hand down the back of his neck, “alone, I believe was the word she used.”

“Wow,” was all Felicity could say when she managed to still her laugh.  
He held out his phone again. “Scroll through, you’ll find a crazy amount of pictures of my cat and then you’ll leave,” he laughed anxiously through a cringed expression, “because I’m twenty three and my phone is full of pictures of a cat called Roxanne.”

She took the phone but only scrolled twice, sure enough each of the three pictures were of the same cat progressively growing.  
“I don’t have a girlfriend, I haven’t since Freshman year at college,” he admitted, his sudden bout of unnecessary honesty catching him a little off guard. The perfectly worldly firecracker that made him hot around the collar and tight in the pants didn't need to know he'd benched himself for so long.  
Her face gave little away as to her thoughts on that confession as she dropped her shoes and ran her slender fingers through the lengths of the wig drooping from her hand.  
“Because?” she asked pointedly, her fingers still combing the blonde locks.  
He shrugged, the answer was a great culmination on things, but he supposed it boiled down to just a few. “Time, circumstance, I don’t know.” He stepped closer. His height and sheer brawn should have been intimidating, but it wasn’t, he wore his size like a protector not an aggressor and Felicity found herself drawn to him but also itching to see what it would take to see him snap into a primal mode. “I wouldn’t do that,” he whispered, his words a little rough and gritty as they growled from deep within that chest of rippling, wet muscles.

“Do what?” she asked, her fingers teasing the knot of his towel while she kept her eyes raised at him, daring him with each blink.  
“Have this amazing time with you if I was thinking of someone else,” he answered, a genuine smile turning up half his mouth, “I wouldn’t be here,” his finger dragged down the neck of her dress, toppled over the fabric and drew a straight line down between her breasts before falling away just below her navel, “and not be _all_ here.”  
His hand flew up to her head and cupped it with her hair threaded through his fingers as he tipped her head up, locking their eyes.  
“Who is Roxanne?” she asked, her words almost lost to her heavy, panted breaths as her fingertips grazed the taut lines of his core, tight, rippled and silky with wetness.  
He wet his lips as his skin tightened under her careful, feathered fingertip. “My cat,” he answered, his voice sitting somewhere between a growl and a low, desperate moan.  
She believed him; as absurd as it might have seemed, it was almost too preposterous for him to make up, so she believed him.

She lifted her body onto her toes and lay her palm against his rigid convex pec with her thumb skimming his small, smooth nipple. Her lips moved towards his and Oliver sucked in a breath of anticipation. But, without touching him, her mouth slid up his jawline, breathing her warm air against his bristled skin. Her mouth reached his ear and for a few languid moments her nose nuzzled the seam while she inhaled the crisp scent of hotel ocean-fragrant body wash. He felt the faintest of hisses near his lobe before she whispered in low purr, “Lose the towel.”

She only needed to ask the once.

**< <<\-------->>>**

With no externship work until January, Felicity found herself slumped across an armchair watching debasing talk shows with a bowl of cereal perched on her stomach as lunchtime rolled around and her phone, tucked under her ass, buzzed with a new message.

Spooning a mouthful of frosted flakes into her mouth and with her eyes glued to the results of a paternity test between two men with the same first name, Felicity plucked the phone out from underneath her and blinked down to read the message.

It was Oliver: **Just thinking about you.**  
She smiled as she read the four simple words at least three times, the paternity test results now nothing more than background noise as a smile tugged up the edges of her nude lips.

She replied with a devilish grin and an equally short message: **what part of me?**  
His reply came without much delay; **I’ll tell you at dinner, tonight. This is me asking.**

“You’re smiling,” Donna remarked while she brushed past Felicity’s toes that hung off the edge.  
Felicity scuttled her sock-clad toes under her rear as she pressed her phone to her chest and chuckled, “Is that so weird?”  
Donna shrugged. “For you, a little,” she teased before she perched on the edge of the arm chair where Felicity was sitting. “Is it that guy, what was his name, Chris?”  
Felicity looked past her mother to the light snowfall outside the window as she casually shrugged one shoulder and tugged on the ends of her sleek ebony hair. “Maybe.”  
“So who is this guy?” she quizzed as a hand gently patted the torn knee of Felicity’s jeans, “Do I get to meet him?”  
The younger woman felt her back stiffen at the mention of it but she braved out a smile and a brushed-off chuckle. “I don’t think so, it’s just sex you know?” she spoke casually as her fingers idly slid around the edge of her phone. “He has a life here and I have school starting back up.”  
It was the truth, this fling came with an expiration date and they both knew it.

Donna laughed, full hearty and animated, “And phones haven’t been invented, and your school is on the moon,” she prattled sarcastically.  
“It’s just not that kind of thing,” Felicity shot back with a sideward glare.  
Her mother stood and with one last gentle tap on Felicity’s tented knee she backed away from the armchair. “If you say so, but he _is_ sending you messages in the middle of the day,” she said coyly as she walked over to the breakfast bar to collect her purse and keys.  
“And?” Felicity immediately queried as she lifted her head up over the back of the chair to watch her mother move to preen in the hallway mirror.  
Donna turned back from the mirror and smiled knowingly before she walked silently to the door. She paused before opening it and shot Felicity another smile, “That means he’s thinking about you, even when there are probably a million other things going on.” She tugged down on the door handle and added, “That says more than just about sex to me. Anyway,” she blew a kiss from the doorway, “I have to go visit my very attractive lawyer.”  
“Oh, you do?” Felicity coughed, as she felt her cheeks warm and she prayed it hadn’t yet become obvious on her face.  
Donna nodded as she shuffled in her platform boots, “We’re going to go through our plan of attack. You want to come?”  
Felicity shook her head far more vigorously than required. “No, I’ve got some school work to catch up on.”  
“Okay doll,” Donna said with a lingered smile, “Just don’t ignore the sunshine for too long.”  
“It’s snowing.”  
“I meant in life,” Donna remarked wisely before she stepped out of the apartment and closed the door behind her, casting the two bedroom apartment into echoing silence, but for the thoughts swarming in Felicity’s head.

She pulled her phone back from her chest and typed a response.  
**What time?**  
His reply was almost immediate, **Can you meet me at 6pm?**  
She was typing out her reply when another message came through from Oliver, **Come as yourself, she’s amazing.**  
She smiled down at the phone until her cheeks got sore before she answered him with a coquettish message; **I think that can be arranged.**

  
**< <<\-------->>>**

The sun had left the sky and a twinkle of city lights had taken over illuminating the short walk from where the taxi dropped her to Oliver’s building. The cobbled plaza was dusted in about an inch of snow that was falling in a light but constant haze. The air smelled crisp and cool but it was pleasant enough to stroll in, especially past the restaurants with the outdoor heaters turned up to a Florida-kind of temperature.

She stopped just a short walk from the glass frontage of the office tower where Queen, Merlyn & Associates swallowed up most of the floors and shivered with a sudden burst of nervous energy. There was still something about what her mother had said that morning that played on her mind and Felicity wasn’t sure what to do with her thoughts.

He had his polished life.  
And she had her plans.  
The two just couldn’t coexist.

And the he appeared through the revolving door and she forgot all of that.

“Wow,” Oliver mouthed as he took her all in.  
Aside from the colour, the short black dress didn’t resemble anything Felicity would ordinarily find herself dressing in. In fact the glitzy, backless number that resembled a galaxy of shimmering glitter-stars against the backdrop of a moonless night, was a previously unworn dress that Donna had bought her and which had taken up residence in the very back of Felicity’s ‘at home’ wardrobe.

It was short and glamourous and it was hard to go unnoticed in a dress like that.  
“Too much?” she blushed as her hands tugged on the mid-thigh hem.  
He took three jogged steps towards her. “No,” he breathed, warm air spiralling up from his mouth like a smokestack, “you look amazing.”

They stood silent for a few moments before Oliver opened his mouth to speak, only for the sound of his phone ringing in his pocket to break the silence instead. Out of habit he pulled the phone from his jacket and stared down at the display. It was his father.

He looked up to the building behind him, still a glow with a hundred late night lights of people who barely remembered what home looked like.

“I’m sorry,” he sighed, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the phone in a frustrated claw. “I’ll just be a minute.”  
“It’s fine,” she brushed off his concern with a smile before Oliver stepped back to answer the call.

“Hi Dad, what’s up?” he answered somewhat tersely.  
“You’re not in your office,” came an even terser response.  
“It’s after 6, I just walked out the door.”  
His eyes locked with Felicity who was breathing smoke signals in the crisp night air. _Sorry_ they said beneath his furrowed brow.  
“We need to discuss a file.”  
Oliver ran an irate hand through his short hair and down his bristled jaw. “I’ll see you first thing in the morning,” he replied through clenched teeth.  
“You just walked out the door,” Robert fired back, using Oliver’s own words against him, “Surely you can spare five minutes for your legacy.”  
“Fine,” he huffed, dejected, “Five minutes.”

He hung up the phone and slammed it back into his pocket before he collected his thoughts and walked back to Felicity.  
“I’m sorry,” he sighed as he stopped just ahead of her, “I need to just go do something real quick,” he pointed his thumb back towards the skyrise. “I’ll be 10, 15 minutes at most.”  
“That’s fine, I can wait,” Felicity shrugged as her eyes scouted for a sheltered place to wait.  
“Out here?” he balked, “it’s snowing.” His head tipped up towards the general vicinity of his office, “You can wait in my office.”  
“Is that allowed?” she teased with a smirk.  
Oliver took her hand and walked her towards the doors, “I’m living on the edge.”

**< <<\-------->>>**

It was 20 minutes later and Felicity was still rattling around Oliver’s empty office. She’d already arranged his pens in the desk caddy and straightened the jotter pad on the top of his desk. She’d also carefully cleaned fingerprints off his monitor and tidied up the twisted mess of wires underneath his desk, quietly cursing at whatever technician set it up that way.

And now, as she watched the clock tick closer to 6:30, she plucked a handful of business cards from the tray on his desk and a pen from his now neatly arranged holder and laughed, amused, as she added the word _Divorce_ to each of them, just in front of the word ‘ _Lawyer_ ’.

It only took about 10 minutes for Felicity to tire of that joke and she soon found herself wandering around his office once again. Her eyes skimmed over the photographs in matching frames that he had scattered across a large bookcase. There were five in total. One of Roxanne, one of a sunset on a beach somewhere, the sky arrayed with vibrant hues of pink and orange, and three of his family, all posed; two at his graduation and one that looked like the cover of a Christmas card one year – the perfect family façade – a husband’s hand placed carefully on a wife’s shoulder, a debutant daughter sitting with her knees together and her ankles crossed and a son, broad shoulders, stupidly handsome face and a life already planned out for him.

Thirty minutes turned into 40 and another few minutes later, after Felicity had plucked each of the hairpins from her hair and lined them up on his desk, Oliver finally walked through the door. He sighed out of both relief and disbelief when he saw she was still waiting for him as he had half expected her to have left.  
“I’m so sorry,” he pleaded, pressing his back against the door to close it with a _thud_. “I thought you might have left.”  
“Well, I didn’t,” she remarked offhandedly as she toyed with the bracelet on her wrist.  
He looked agitated as his feet marched tracks into his office and his jaw tightened with each step. “We missed our reservations,” he lamented, silently fuming at himself for ever walking back into that _damn_ building.  
“Oliver it’s okay,” she said softly, sensing the berating he was giving himself.  
He dug his fist into the edge of his desk, the anger behind his eyes turning them dark with shadows, “It’s not, I had this planned and I couldn’t even get that right.” She watched his lips fold and tense and pull tight into his cheeks. “You know you would think he would concentrate on the child who basically won’t talk to either of her parents and is flunking one of the most prestigious high schools in the Country, but no,” he blustered as his fist lifted off the desk and jammed into his own leg, “I’m the one that gets a lecture, I’m the one that has to live up to these insufferable expectations.”

_The façade was cracking._

“You didn’t want to be a lawyer did you?” she asked softly as her hand instinctively smoothed down his arm, feeling it relax almost immediately.  
“I did,” he answered quietly as his eyes roamed around the fancy office, “just not this. I wanted to specialise in Human Rights, try and help the ones that can’t help themselves.” He wanted to pace, but his feet stayed anchored to the floor, because his arm was tethered to her hand. “I knew I would have to cut my teeth somewhere, but this wasn’t it.”  
“Then why do you do it?” she asked poignantly.  
It was a question he’d always been too afraid of the answer to ask himself. But the answer came out much easier than he’d imagined, albeit not any better, “Because, I’m the heir.”

“I’m sorry,” he added as his hand ruffled his slightly gelled hair, fraying the top into spikes. “I sound like a petulant child.”  
“It’s not petulant or childish to want your own life,” she remarked, preaching to herself as much as she was to him.  
“I can see if I can fix this, get us a new reservation,” he said as he plucked his phone from his pocket and put a feigned smile on his lips.  
Felicity took the phone from his hand and placed it on his desk, just out of reach. “Oliver sit down,” she instructed as she nodded her head back towards his plush leather chair.  
“Why?”  
She twisted his tie around her hand and gave it a gentle tug. “Sit down,” she repeated with a lopsided smile lifting up one side of her lips.

That time Oliver did as asked and made his way around his desk before slumping into his office chair. Standing above him, Felicity teased the tip of his tie down his cropped beard and across his full lips before she flipped it over his shoulder.

Keeping her eyes on his, she undid his belt and peeled down the zipper of his navy suit pants. She shimmed them down his thighs, needing to pull them sharply from under his rear, before she cupped the growing erection behind his grey briefs and smiled. With her palm pressed into his base, Felicity gently massaged her fingertips into his bulge, grinning as it stiffened beneath her.

His fingers drew lines up her bare arm like a feather as his breath shivered from his lips. “What are you doing?” he asked, or rather moaned.  
“I’m going to relax you,” she answered as her free hand loosened his tie and flicked open the top button on his white shirt.  
“But I ruined our night,” he hissed lasciviously when she kissed the trembling lump in his throat.  
“You worry too much,” she hummed as her kisses smeared red lipstick across his white neck. She fed her hand under the waistband of his briefs and gripped the base of his erect member. “You need to stop worrying about what other people want,” she spoke softly as she continued to kiss up towards his ear. “You care too much about keeping everyone else happy.” Her hand slowly worked his cock to mid-shaft before she would twist her wrist and slid her hand back to the base.

His lips smacked together as his tongue patted the roof of his mouth, now suddenly dry as he took sharp inhales. On the next tug of his cock her hand slid further towards the tip and her thumb stroked the slit, gathering his excitement pooling there.

“Is this against the rules?” she whispered as her teeth nipped his earlobe.  
His back molars ground together as Felicity squeezed his hard length and gently kissed his ear. “I should fucking think likely,” he groaned, his voice low and guttural before he turned his head to snap her lips up with his own.  
Their mouths crashed and their tongues fought as Felicity pumped her hand vigorously up and down his pulsing shaft.

His head was light and his breathing shallow and fitful as his temperature soared to a level that felt like his blood was boiling beneath his skin and sweat misted his forehead. His core tightened with a pinch that he felt down the back of both thighs. _Fuck he was close._ He hadn’t gotten off from a hand job since he was a senior in high school but there was something insanely carnal about that moment, where his ass cheeks were sticking to his leather chair and his fingers were turning white around the arms with his heart beating through his chest that…just… _fuck_.

She dropped his cock and the feeling of it, stiff and thumping, springing in the air made Oliver groan salaciously against Felicity’s mouth before she pulled that away too.

He swallowed his breath in three fast gulps as she dropped to her knees and licked the drenched tip of his cock with her eyes carefully trained on him.

Broken curse words stammered from his mouth as he watched her slid him deep into her perfectly pouted mouth, painted a vivacious red. Warmth and wetness surrounded him as she hollowed her cheeks and sucked him to the back of her throat while her fingers teased his thrumming balls.

His fingers laced in her hair and followed her head as she bobbed up and down his cock with her lips turned into a half-tipped smile. Moments later Oliver found himself clenching and shuddering and coming undone in ribbons of silky come that Felicity slurped up with a devilish chuckle.

When his load was well and truly shot, she slid his cock from her mouth and dropped it into the palm of her hand and carefully licked away any of the remnants left before she tapped the base of his spent dick and stood up.

“There, now you’re relaxed,” she grinned.

“So, how much work can you do for free for my mom now?” she asked with a wicked smile teasing the corners of her lips as she dabbed her little finger to each side.  
“Oh, Felicity, I,” he stumbled as his eyes finally began to float down from the ceiling.  
She ran a quick swipe of lipstick across her pouted lips as she used the glass on his framed certificate like a mirror. “I’m kidding,” she teased before she smacked her lips together and laughed.  
Oliver looked down at his flaccid cock, smiling before he tucked it back into his briefs and shucked his pants back up his legs when he stood. “I feel bad about dinner still,” he remarked with an apologetic smile.  
Felicity pushed off the wall and walked felinely towards him, the heels of her shoes making a most delicious scratching sound through the short pile carpet.  
“I had a snack,” she whispered as she dragged a dark-tipped nail down her throat.  
“All the same,” he breathed, tipping his head down towards her, his lips so close to hers that they inhabited the same warm gasps of air, “I’d like to make it up to you.”

“And how do you propose doing that?” she flirted her tongue across her lips, making them wet and shiny and making Oliver groan at the sight of them, puffed and glossy.  
“Firstly, my place for dinner.” His voice was hot and emboldened, with just a hint of rasped danger and the sound of it made Felicity expel a soft, pleasured moan.  
“And then?” she blinked up at him, her eyes wide and enticing.  
He brushed wisps of hair back from her face and pinned them to her temple as his lips glided over hers and stopped near her ear. “You’ll see,” he hummed, making her skin shiver in a most delicious way.

  
**< <<\-------->>>**

  
“Wow.” This time it was Felicity who said the word with awe as she followed him into his high-end apartment. “This place is nice.”  
Oliver took her coat and hung it by the door before he let his eyes wander the familiar sights of the two level apartment with its dark mahogany floors and walls of tinted glass.

“It was a graduation present,” he remarked as he took her hand and led her further into the apartment.  
Felicity chuckled, amused, “Beats my fake ID.”

Her fingers touched the luxuriant velvet couch as they strolled, hand in hand, around the plush living space, with its balcony views of the city and its fine furnishings in slate grey and burnt ash. But despite all its touches, no doubt chosen by an interior designer worth their large paycheque, it had a feeling of homeliness to it, a feeling of quiet serenity and an escape from a life barely enjoyed.

“Are you sure your sister isn’t home?” Felicity asked as Oliver swept her into an embrace, his large arms completely surrounding her svelte figure.  
He leant down and kissed her lips softly, twice, leaving her lips parted and waiting for a third. “I drove her back to my parents’ house this morning, myself.”  
“And Roxanne won’t get jealous?” Felicity asked with a coy smile painted across her playful expression as her fingers danced underneath the back of Oliver’s shirt.  
He kissed her a third time, long and deep, his tongue scouting into her mouth before tracing the line of her lips, before he pulled away just as suddenly as he’d pounced. “I won’t lie, there is a strong possibility she will.”  
“I guess she’ll just have to learn to share you,” Felicity growled before she nipped at his lower lip and dragged her nails down his back making Oliver hiss insatiably.

His hands dropped down her body and kneaded into the rounds of her ass making a hedonistic sigh bleed from her mouth into his as she sucked his bottom lip between her own.

“So where do you want to do this?” she asked, breathless against his lips as her nose nestled against his and her toes curled into the ends of her shoes as she teetered on the tips. “Any kinky little fantasies?” she pulled back to study the reaction in his eyes, but it gave nothing away. “I can be your hooker and you can be my Richard Gere.”  
“Actually,” he hummed as he stooped lower and began kissing a slow, wet path down her swanned neck, “I was thinking we could slow it down.”  
She tugged on the shorts of his hair at the nape of his neck as his tepid breath misted against her skin. “You want to order take out and watch porn?” she laughed, albeit a rasped one.  
“No,” he kissed the word into the pulse point under her chin, making her pulse rev as a breath hitch in her throat. “I mean slow the sex down, take our time.”  
As he spoke his fingers stroked under the hem of her raised dress and between her full, buxom cheeks, and then his hands fell away from her and he took a step back, only touching her chin just enough to raise her head to look at him. “I want to take my time with you.”  
“Well shit,” she blushed as her teeth nipped at her lower lip, “that’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

His lips feathered a kiss across hers that was over much sooner than she would have liked and the pout on her mouth was testimony to that. “But first, dinner.” He smiled as his fingers wove with hers.

A short while later and Felicity was sipping on a glass of red wine as she perched on a barstool and watched Oliver over the kitchen island as he moved about the kitchen with his white shirt rolled up past his elbows and his tie and jacket slung over the stool beside her.

A jingle of a bell grew louder as the desperate mewl of a hungry cat just pulled from a slumber sounded through both levels of the apartment.  
“Roxanne I presume,” Felicity hummed as the cat appeared at Oliver’s ankles.  
He collected the beautifully fluffy young cat into his arms making Felicity smile brightly at the sight of a man and his _pussy_.  
“Please don’t leave,” Oliver begged as he gave Felicity a playful grimace.  
She took a short sip of wine as she kept her eyes on him. “I guess it’s kind of cute,” she purred softly.  
“You think so?” he smiled clumsily as Roxanne smooched her nose into his neck.  
“No, it’s terrible and as soon as you turn your back I’m going to run out of this apartment,” she teased with a bubbly laugh before her lips fell into a soft and assuring smile, “it’s kind of cute.”

He carefully put Roxanne back onto the tiled floor and called her towards the pink ceramic bowl piled with dry food before he washed his hands and moved back to the dinner preparations.

Felicity watched, intrigued, as he basted the salmon and placed the lemon slices and fresh herbs on top before folding the aluminium foil into two perfectly sealed parcels.  
“Who taught you to cook?” she asked before taking another sip of the decadent wine that warmed her throat while an electric fire glowing behind her warmed the rest of her body as the snow grew thick outside.  
Oliver opened the oven and carefully fed the tray inside before he set the timer and walked away. “Self-taught mostly. I find it relaxing.”

He walked slowly around the back of her, breathing in the subtle hints of her perfume mixed with the richly aromatic wine open on the counter. He brushed her hair over one shoulder and languidly kissed from the nape of her neck to the tip of her spine, his lips as light as a feather that prickled her skin beneath them.

Just as she brought the glass up to her lips, Oliver plucked the same from her hand and rested it back down on the counter.  
“I promised I wouldn’t tell on you for giving me that,” she laughed as she turned in her seat, her body crowded by his.  
His fingers grasped at hers, rolling together like turbulent waves until they settled, palm pressed to palm. Stepping back, he pulled her slowly from the stool and Felicity floated on her tiptoes to where he led her; the dimly lit living room and more specifically the invitingly soft, wide-seated couch.

She propped herself up on the arm of the couch as Oliver stood with her legs between his and both their hands now entwined.  
“I want to ask you something, but I don’t know if I should,” he spoke softly as the orange glow from behind them covered his face in decadent shadows.  
“You won’t know until you ask,” she answered as she swung their arms whimsically to and fro.  
“The salmon has 30 minutes to bake,” he rasped before he lathed his tongue across his lips.  
She hung her thumbs from his leather belt. “Are you asking me about cooking times?”  
“No.” His face darkened a little as his smile grew a little deviant. “I said there was a second thing I wanted to do to make tonight up to you,” he tapped her knees with the back of his knuckles and instinctively she parted them. “I want to know if I can put my head between your legs and lick you until you come for 30 minutes.  
He dropped to his knees and opened her legs a little wider before his bristled chin tickled the inside of her knee.  
She scraped her nails across his scalp as he looked up at her. “Be my guest,” she answered coyly.

Her thumbs dug into the smooth fabric while her fingers slid down towards the seat as her back arched and her rear perched on the very edge. He started with soft pecks that dotted up one leg to her mid-thigh before hopping down the other. She sucked in her lower lip and teased it with her tongue as her eyes languished somewhere between closed and open.

"I'm going to remove these," he spoke into the underside of her knee as his thick fingers grazed the hem of her panties before tugging them gently over her hips.  
She nodded as she raised her ass off the seat, allowing Oliver to drag the flimsy black satin garment over the curve of her pert rear and down her legs with his fingers drawing a line behind them. At the ankles he carefully lifted one leg, fed the fabric deliriously slow over the patent black stiletto and then mirrored the action on the other side. When he held her panties in his hand he slid them slowly through his fingers before he tucked them into his back pocket.

His mouth fell back to her skin with a kiss at the top of her thigh, much higher than he had gone before, and Felicity moaned lasciviously at the warm breath that tickled her folds. He inhaled her, letting her heady scent to fill his lungs and float to the back of his throat to tease his sense of taste too.

His eyes drank in the sight of her plush peach nether-lips already glistened with her arousal. He slipped a finger between her folds, slicing her delicate flesh open like a budding flower. The folds of her skin became darker near the base as her body grew warm and flushed.

He found her clit with this thumb and carefully peeled back the hood, watching as Felicity gulped air and bit back a moan. She wore arousal so beautifully, from the light flush across her cheeks to the way she bit trenches into her pillowed lips with her throat like a watercolour of scarlet.

Unable, perhaps unwilling, to ignore his own urges, Oliver lifted up onto the height of his knees and caught her throat with a wanton kiss.  
“Oliver,” she moaned his name and he damn near came in his pants at hearing it. She had said it before, in needy moments before she came around his cock, but that whispered moan was something else, something he could die _fucking_ happy having heard.

With an extremely light touch Oliver stroked the inside of her thighs as his mouth tumbled kisses down towards her chest. She moaned softly as her body rolled beneath him and her head fell backwards. His mouth soon returned to the top of her thigh and like a feather he moved from there to her aching sex. When he placed the first kiss, Felicity panted his name as her head snapped forward and her eyes flew open, desperate to see the sight of him between her legs.

His tongue sliced between her folds making her whole body shiver and her teeth stamp down on her swollen lip. Her hips tipped towards him, pushing her body against his mouth before he caught her as the waist and with only one hand, he held her still.

“I wanted to take my time,” he hummed as his lips drew back from her heat and his finger instead swept gently between her folds.  
“Oops,” she said as a smirk fluttered across her lips.  
He kissed her thigh, her skin now more sensitive to the graze of his beard making her shudder as he lifted her leg and placed it over his shoulder. With his fingers still caressing her folds and teasing her clit with light pinches, Oliver watched her intently, noting what actions brought the most pleasure to her expression.

When his middle finger was coated in her, Oliver slipped it into her entrance and Felicity’s heel dug into his back in response. He pumped it slowly but deeply, all the way to the last knuckle as her walls gripped around him.

“Another finger?” he asked, his voice thick and gravelled.  
“Yes,” her answer trembled from her mouth while her knuckles turned poltergeist-white as she gripped the couch arm.  
He slid a second finger, the one with the ring, and Felicity almost leapt off the couch at the exquisite sensation, stopped only by the other hand still holding her at the waist.

Her sex flourished, turning from a soft peach to a deep pink that shimmered with her early spend. He kissed her mound and poked his tongue between her sweltering folds, before teasing the tip of her clit with a playful bat-about.

“Fuck-fuck-fuck,” she moaned into the quiet of his apartment just as his mouth encased her swollen nub. Her pleasure intensified when he gently sucked her tight pearl while his fingers continued to thrust inside and scissor her walls.

The ache and longing Felicity felt had her begging his name ardently with every breath she took as he continued to devour her body until her vision grew hazy and her breathing became erratic and short. He eagerly continued, waiting ravenously for her creamy rich release, which finally came on a cry of pure delirium and a convulsion of shudders. He smiled against her dripping folds and continued to plunge his fingers in and out of her sex, only slowing when her shaking began to ease.

 _Ding_.

Oliver grunted against her thighs as he lapped up her sweet release, though not yet having had his fill. The top of his head lifted from between her trembling legs as he held her at the waist.  
“Let it burn,” he rasped, his lips wet with her and his eyes devouring the slick trails that glistened the tops of her thighs, “I never wanted to be a chef anyway.”

 

**> >have this, it's cute<<**

****


	6. Curious.

With her eyes still closed but the sleepy fog slowly lifting from Felicity’s mind, she decided while her limbs melted into Oliver’s _posturepedic_ mattress that she would gladly spend her first real-world paycheque on a down payment for one of them. With a long, silent yawn her eyes fluttered open as she began her morning stretching ritual starting with her shoulders.

She smacked her lips together after another yawn as she rolled her ankles against the silky-Egyptian cotton sheets and decided a set of those would be her second paycheque.

Before she sat up she spent a few moments feeling the slight ache in her body as she smiled, remembering the night before. The _sexcapade_ had found them move around his apartment like it was the set of a high-end porno. There was a dull throbbing between her legs that felt remarkably pleasing and a slight tightness across her core; _her yoga instructor would have been proud._

But most remarkable of all was the minor twinge in her cheeks, the one that she got from smiling. She sat up slowly in the bed and let the sensation of the movement wash over her body before she actually realised she was alone in the room… _well almost._

Sitting on the opposite side of the bed, where she would have expected to have found Oliver, was Roxanne spread out like a sphinx and giving Felicity a squinted stare down.  
“It’s okay, I’m not going to be your step mom,” she prattled as she held the sheet across her naked chest, “he’s all yours, I’m just borrowing him.”

The pure-breed didn’t move, not even to blink and while every logical part of Felicity’s brain told her that Roxanne was a cat and therefore didn’t understand human and probably couldn’t care less that Felicity was there; her imagination told her to never turn her back on that feline, lest she find a set of claws embedded in it.

A flat square of white paper sat on her nightstand and caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. Without looking away from Roxanne’s glaring green eyes Felicity collected the same and read it.

 _I’m downstairs, fresh coffee in the machine_  
_-Oliver_

“Please don’t murder me in my sleep,” Felicity whispered to her furry nemesis as she slid out of the bed and padded to where her clothes were draped over the back of a suede armchair.  
She pouted at the tight dress as her body creaked and groaned at the prospect of putting that on again while she simultaneously cursed herself for not stuffing a pair of jeans and a tee into her handbag the night before. Staying over at someone’s house always had drawbacks the following morning.

Her eyes wandered over to the open door on Oliver’s sizeable walk-in closet and honed in on the row of suits immaculately lined up like a designer’s clothing store rack. She sauntered over there with a devilish smile twisting up the corner of her faintly-painted lips, remnants of the _colour-last_ lipstick from the night before (quite the advertisement for its staying power). She instantly found herself drawn to a crisp white shirt that had just the right amount of starch in the collar to peak it like two polar icecaps.

Felicity slipped it of the hanger and onto her shoulders before she buttoned it up just enough to maintain her dignity. She walked back into the bedroom to find Roxanne had turned to face the closet and was, while once more maintaining eye contact, kneading her claws into the bed linen.

“Come February he’s all yours again, I promise,” Felicity said with a Cheshire grin and a wink before she left the bedroom and headed downstairs.

She followed the aromatic scent of coffee into the kitchen, past the blackened salmon in the sink, the take out containers nearby and a finished bottle of wine on the counter. The fresh, dark-roast java permeated the climate-controlled air like the decadent addiction that it was and Felicity wasted no time pouring a mug of it.

Once the first sip of the elixir slipped through her lips Felicity felt her entire body relax with a giant, shoulder-dropping, blissful sigh. After the second sip, she realised she hadn’t actually found Oliver yet.

She set the mug on the counter after sneaking a third sip and listened to the sounds of the penthouse apartment before her eyes were taken with the view. Leaving her coffee behind, Felicity walked on the balls of her bare feet from the heated tiles of the kitchen and onto the plush carpet in the living room, drawn by the sweeping panoramic of a City she barely knew.

As she took in the sights with silent wonderment, she heard what sounded like a deep grunting dispersed with the distinctive clunk of metal hitting metal. Her head turned towards the sound and she smiled at the realisation that there was a corridor down the other side of the living room, something she had been too _preoccupied_ last night to even notice.

She followed the sound past a stairwell that led to a second lofted bedroom and down the corridor, where one side was a wall of glass that followed the view of the City and the other was dotted with artwork, until she reached the partially opened door of the room the sound was emanating from.

Stood at the doorway, Felicity peered into the home gym and smiled. Her mother’s ‘home gym’ was code for a treadmill in the corner of her bedroom where she hung clothes.

The room looked the same size as her entire double dorm room at MIT. The wall to the left of her was lined with a row of floor to ceiling mirrors and an array of weights neatly shelved. On the wall to the right hung two TVs with various cardio equipment positioned in front of them, only two of which Felicity knew the names of. Lastly, in the centre of the room was something that resembled a fort of metal bars and padded leather.

That was where Oliver was, facing away from her and pulling down on a bar that was rigged into a pulley system which seemed to be lifting up an obscene amount of weight-blocks. The white singlet he was wearing was almost transparent as it clung to his wet skin like body-paint and his biceps were bulging under his taunt skin as he huffed out another grunt.

 _Fuck_ she thought to herself as she shifted against the doorframe, suddenly aware of her simmering arousal. She could only imagine the sweat pooling across his brow, and the red flush that likely coloured his drenched cheeks. She tugged her lip inward to stop her own groan escaping as she sneaked into the room.

“Ten more and I’ll give you head,” she said brazenly as she appeared around the side of the home gym.  
A thunderous clunk echoed through the room when Oliver dropped the bar and the six weights he’d been lifting crashed back down.  
Her assumption had been right; beads of perspiration saturated his skin and his cheeks were glowing a warm amber hue before he reached up to a white towel hung on a nearby bar and brushed it across his sodden face.  
“Don’t get up on my account,” she added as he patted the towel to his neck and made a concerted effort to stand.

Her eyes roved the ripped lines of his chest as her tongue peaked between her lips. “I’ve seen you naked but _holy_ shit, that’s what you hide under your shirts all day?”  
He laughed, slightly breathless before he dropped the towel and took a gulp of water from a bottle at his feet. “Speaking of,” he finally rasped as he touched the hem of her makeshift outfit.  
She smoothed her palms down the tail of the shirt before falling away mid-thigh where it stopped. “It looked comfortable, I hope that’s okay,” she curtsied coquettishly.  
Oliver collected the towel from his lap and made another pass over his face as he studied the outline of her curves where they brushed the sides of the draping white shirt.  
“It’s more than okay,” he answered, his voice heavy and coated with husky desire. “How about I have a shower and we go back to bed?” he added as his fingertips weaved up the back of her thighs.  
“How about you don’t and we stay here,” she countered.  
“I’m very sweaty.”  
She sat onto his lap, instantly feeling his dampness against her thighs before she ran her fingertips down his soaked chest, stopping at the hem of that dripping cotton singlet. With a smile animating her face, Felicity lifted the singlet from his body and dropped it to the tiled floor with a lewd, wet _splosh_ before she leaned into him, her hardened nipples grazing his chest and whispered, “I’m very well aware of that.” She paused to lick from the base of his neck to his ear, her tongue twinging with his saltiness, “And I’m very, very okay with it.”

“In fact,” she continued as she stroked her fingers across his damp scalp, “with these washboard abs I’m pretty certain I could get myself off no problem if you want to sit back and relax,” she smiled wickedly before she tipped his head back and caught his lips hungrily with her own.

Her hips bucked and rocked above him, teasing succulent moans from his mouth and into her own while her nails raked down his neck and across his shoulders. She could feel his rod stiffen underneath her and Felicity smiled devilishly as she ground her body deeper into his and relished the way his body, precisely his chest, quivered at the pressure.

She slid her body back towards his knees with her lips still on his until the reach was too far. Breathlessly their mouths fell apart just as Felicity stood on her own two feet and brushed her fingertips across his prominent erection.  
"Hello friend," she grinned as she tapped the head and Oliver sucked in a gasp. She pinched two fingers just below the ridge and his mouth fell open with a silent moan; he was like a marionette doll but instead of strings, he had a cock.

Her fingers brushed off Oliver and while the feathered strokes had been like torture to his throbbing cock, the ache left behind when she retracted her touch was even worse. His eyes grew hazy as all the blood made its way to his engorgement, until he blinked into focus her fingers as they lazily touched the buttons on the shirt she was wearing.

She plucked the first one open and Oliver wet his lips as the shirt opened to the centre of her breast bone as his eyes traced the slopes of her pert cleavage.  
“Shirt on or off?” she asked as she hovered her fingers above the next button.

Oliver leaned forward as his palms sunk into her silken thighs, just above the knees. He lightly kissed her ivory complexion between her breasts, humming his contentment before his chin prickled her skin as he looked up at her.  
“On but undone,” he answered while his fingers drew tiny circles at the soft, sensitive flesh at the back of her knees.

He watched her as she considered his request, her dark hair piled on top of her crown and her bottom lip snagged between her teeth. “I'll accept that request,” she smiled softly as her fingers moved deftly over the last two buttons.

The shirt draped open over her slender body, swamping her shoulders in an extra foot of fabric. His fingers skated up her thighs and grazed the edge of her lace panties before she lowered herself back onto his lap.

His knees tucked over the padded leg bar as Felicity worked his shorts down his thighs just enough for his throbbing semi to pop out from beneath the lightweight fabric. She gently coaxed his cock with long, measured strokes while her other hand discovered the slick trails of his chest.

His hands flicked open her shirt, her coral nipples were erect and her pert breasts looked ripe. As her hand continued to pleasure him, Oliver craned his neck and ran the tip of his tongue over her taut nipple. She reacted with a keened sigh while his hand curtained her panties and a finger slowly stroked between her folds, teasing out her wetness.

She looked down at him, arousal pinking her cheeks and dripping like watercolour down her throat and chest. With his eyes entrenched in hers, Oliver circled her nipple with his tongue before grazing the inner edge of his lip up and over it. Felicity shivered as the slow tease of his tongue matched the gentle stroke of his thick digit through her sex, which paused at her clit to draw tiny circles around the budded pearl.

When her wetness well and truly coated his finger, Felicity swatted his hand away as she eyed up his pulsing cock, now woven with tight veins and thin, nearly opaque skin.

He was in no mind to argue as his thighs were warm with the heat that pulsed off her body and his hard cock was twitching to be inside her tight, cushioned walls. As she eased him gently into her thrumming entrance, Oliver sunk his mouth onto her breast, devouring the nipple as he massaged his palm into the other. She mewled happily while her arms stretched up to the arm press bar for stability. When her hands were clasped around the horizontal bar, Oliver, bracing one hand at her waist with his fingers splayed across her back, thrust upwards lifting his ass of the leather cushion with an indecorous sounds of wet flesh peeling off hot and sticky leather, all while his mouth hopped greedily from one breast to the other.

With her feet braced on cool metal bars behind his seat and her body suspended a few inches above his lap, Felicity swayed and bucked with each thrust he plunged inside her. Her screams of pleasure were muted behind panted breaths as they continued to fuck like that for hazy minutes, until her thighs tingled and her chest rolled with anticipation. She let go of the bar and swallowed him to the hilt as she lifted his mouth from her breasts and kissed him with wildly thrashing tongues and amorously hungry lips just as she blanketed his shaft in her warm, silken release.

With a few more bucks and with one hand twisted in her hair and the other kneading her ass, Oliver came too, huffing out a strangled moan against her lips.

“Fuck,” he sighed, breathless, as her lips slid from his, her own brow now beaded with perspiration.  
Their bodies continued to move, the rock of her hips now slow and tilted down to milk all they could from that moment.  
“Mhmm,” she agreed as her eyes drifted closed and her head lolled into the crook of his neck.

_Fuck indeed._

**< <<\-------->>>**

  
Felicity swung her feet from the benchtop as Oliver floated around the kitchen where the aroma of scrambled eggs filled the room. Her toe tucked into the back pocket of his blue jeans and tugged him back towards her with an amused laugh.

He turned between her legs and pecked a chaste kiss to her smiling lips.  
“How’d we end up here?” he asked, fascinated.  
Felicity shifted on the benchtop as she absently ironed her palms down the hem of the white shirt she’d now claimed as her own. “My mom is getting a divorce, so…” she shrugged, just one corner of her lips pulling up into a lopsided smile.  
“Right, I’m sorry,” he sighed apologetically.  
“Don’t be,” Felicity said with her chin rising proudly. “The bastard hit on me at least four times, she’s better off without that cheating sack of shit. She stuck with him, but come the end of the pre-nup period and he dumps her with nothing.” She was just talking to say it. Her mother was a strong woman, someone she had always admired. She’d married him for some grandiose idea of love. He’d married her for a blond that looked hot in a cocktail dress. “Do you think she has any chance?”

Oliver's brows pinched briefly together as he considered what she’d just said. “Cheating? Your mom never mentioned anything about him being unfaithful,” he said curiously.  
Felicity’s shoulders shrugged forward. “She wouldn’t, she still wants to believe he’s a good guy, but he’s not,” she answered, her disdain for the man fairly obvious. “Why does it matter anyway?”  
“There was a clause in the agreement that if he admits to an extramarital affair, he’ll pay her alimony,” Oliver recounted. It had been something he’d brought up to John earlier in the piece and John assured him he’d gone through that with Donna and she had said it wasn’t relevant. “Do you have any proof?”  
She shook her head and the top knot at her crown bobbed side to side. “I don’t suppose the times he tried it on with me count?”  
“I’m afraid not,” Oliver simpered before his smile dropped away and was replaced with a more sombre expression. “Did he ever…?” he started softly, tiptoeing through the inference that Felicity easily caught.

“No, God no,” she shook her head, “It was after I was 18, and if he’d ever actually tried anything my mom would have helped me bury the body, but the offer was always there, on the table.” She shifted closer to the edge of the bench and folded her legs around his waist. “That doesn’t really help at all does it?” she laughed animatedly.  
“I don’t know,” he said warmly as he pushed his chest against hers, so close that not even a single sheet of paper could pass between them, “maybe.”

A knock on the door drove them apart before Oliver trundled across the apartment to answer it, returning a few moments later with a tuxedo in a drycleaner’s bag.  
“That’s a fancy tux are you getting married?” Felicity asked with an impish laugh as Oliver folded the bag over a nearby chair.  
“Are you asking?” he answered, deadpan for a moment until his face gave way to a gimpy smile.  
Felicity shook her head adamantly, that wasn’t on the cards. “No, sorry,” she laughed.

He walked back around to his original spot between her legs after giving a quick glance to the fluffy eggs cooking in the slow cooker.  
“I have a gala to go to tonight,” he answered as his hands stroked up the outside of her thighs.  
“Oh,” she popped the word out like a sound over her _now_ bare lips.  
“I would have invited you, but you said no stuffy events,” he spoke with a cheeky smile and his head cocked a little towards his left shoulder, their faces almost exactly aligned.  
“Yeah, that’s a pass,” she agreed as her arms draped over his shoulders and her fingers distractedly played with the short hairs along his nape.  
“Are you sure?”  
She nodded, keeping the smile on her face as she replied, “I have nothing to wear and I don’t think I’d be allowed inside in my jeans.”  
“You could wear this,” he hummed coyly as his long fingers dipped under the hem of her shirt.  
“Mmm,” her lips purred with the sound, “I could but I still don’t think they’d let me in.”  
Oliver pursed his lips into a smirk. “I don’t know, my last name might hold a little clout.”

She ruffled her fingers up the back of his head. “Go, have fun. I have a shit load of school stuff to do.”  
His hands anchored at her waist under the fine cotton shirt. “Say the word and I’ll stay home with you.”  
“You have responsibilities,” she shot back, smiling.  
“I’ll blow them off.”  
“That’s not you.”  
Their words went back and forth like a ping pong match.  
“It could be”  
“Don’t,” she sighed, slowing the conversation, “I like that you’re not like every other guy I’ve been with.” Her thumbs smoothed through his trimmed beard as her nails combed around his ears.  
“I’m not?” he quizzed with one raised brow.  
“No,” she chuckled, “none of them had a cat.”  
“Is that all?”  
“Or a job,” she shrugged haplessly before adding “except Dillon, he was in a band.”  
“You were a groupie?” he teased with a puckish smirk.  
She narrowed her eyes and slightly pursed her lips, “And you dated cheerleaders in high school.”  
“Who told you?” he gaped.  
She plucked his nose with a kiss. “It’s just written into your DNA. So what happened, shouldn’t you be making perfect babies by now?”  
He didn’t have to think too long for the answer, it was one he knew back then and continued to know now. “I didn’t love her.”  
“That simple huh?”  
He nodded. “It took me longer than it should have to realise it, but yeah.”  
“Did you break her heart?” she enquired as her fingers laced around the back of his neck. It seemed neither of them could keep their hands in one spot as his soon moved from her waist to the small of her back, his fingers brushing up her spine.  
“Truthfully,” he shrugged, “We both knew it was time. I think my mother took the breakup harder than my ex.”  
“Oh, ouch,” Felicity playfully winced, “she was a fan?”  
“I think my ex fitted into the mould,” he lamented. It had been the reason they had carried on the farce of a relationship long after they should have, but eventually even that wasn't enough to make the impossible work.

“But tonight,” he said, shifting the subject, “You could still come.”  
“No, I have some things to catch up on, and I should get going as soon as you bring me my perfect eggs you promised,” she smiled widely as her fingers cascaded down his back before patting his juicy rear.  
“Stay a little longer,” he whispered as he leaned in and pressed a kiss against her full lips.  
“I wish I could,” she simpered while their lips stayed pressed to each other. One last peck and she pulled away, “But I promised mom we’d do lunch.”  
“Can I call you tonight?”  
He gave her ass a gentle squeeze before she went for another kiss.  
“Yeah,” she breathed into his mouth.

  
**< <<\-------->>>**

It was late, sometime close to 10pm and Oliver’s goodwill for stock market chatter and self-indulgent back-patting disguised as philanthropy was wearing thin. His woollen tux now felt like a coffin of brillo pads and his cheeks hurt from forced smiles. If not for the fact his mother had somehow roped him in to emceeing the silent auction at 10:30pm, he would have put on his best impression of ‘man dying from the plague’ and excused himself from the tedious and wearisome festivities much earlier in the evening.

But as it was, he was still there, nursing his second whiskey over ice and taking random turns down unfamiliar corridors in the swanky establishment to find a quiet little corner to do something he’d been dying to all night; ring Felicity.

He tried not to think about it too much as December, and the year in general, drew to a close. Neither of them were under any illusions that this _thing_ , this ‘sexual tryst’ if you will, had the longevity of something more, but, when Oliver allowed himself to consider how many days January had in it, he couldn’t help but imagine _what if._

He sat his drink, with its puddle of diluted dregs, on a nearby table and fished his phone from his pocket. The dead-end hallway was all but silent apart from the distant muffled sounds of a cover band playing all the inoffensive hits.

He set his eyes out the window in front of him, bespeckled with stranded snowflakes, and dialled Felicity's number.  
“Black panties with a skull motif and a college sweatshirt,” Felicity said as she answered the phone. Oliver, expecting something more like ‘hello’, spluttered out a surprised cough. “That’s what you wanted to know isn’t it, what I’m wearing?” she continued, the smirk on her lips apparent in her tone.  
Oliver composed himself with a clearing of his throat. “Am I that transparent?”  
She chuckled, warm and alluring. “Or maybe I just wanted to tell you while I sit here _all_ alone,” she purred, well aware of the sex-kitten tone that was honeying her voice.  
He gulped, loud enough for her to hear. “You’re alone?”  
She dropped the sex-kitten act as she starred at the laptop screen in front of her which was slowly making her cross-eyed. “For a few more hours probably.”  
“I could come over and help you study,” he rasped, his tongue flirting absently with the middle of his bottom lip.  
“Do you know anything about binary codes and algorithm statistics?” she quizzed rhetorically.  
“No,” he answered with a pep, “but I could hold your pencil.”  
“It's cute you think I use a pencil,” she teased as she rubbed her tired eyes under her glasses.

“Tomorrow night you’re taking the night off,” he said matter-of-factly as he watched the lights of cars on the city streets illuminate the night.  
“I am, am I?” she smirked before she took a sip of soda.  
“Yes, you me and a lane at Murphy’s booked at eight,” Oliver remarked, his voice adopting a sort of surety Felicity found endearing and, honestly, quite sexual. That or she was still feeling the after effects of the night before, and the morning a few hours ago.  
“And what’s Murphy’s?”  
“Bowling.”  
She laughed, bemused, “You can’t be serious.”  
Given she had just been having rather tantric recounts of their _sexcapades_ , the wholesome act of bowling seemed so out of place.  
  
“Why Smoak, are you afraid I’m going to beat you?” he teased.  
She pouted despite the fact he couldn’t see it. “Its simple geometry and weight distribution, I’m afraid I’ll beat you Queen. I’m not sure a male’s ego can cope. It might cause lasting, irreversible damage where you become an insufferable white man who asks to see the manager at every conceivable moment.”  
Oliver laughed effervescently. “I’m willing to put a wager on it.”  
“You have nothing to offer me,” she sassed with a grin he could hear.  
“It really does sound like you’re afraid of losing.”  
His jolly mocking seemed to do the trick as she relented. “Fine, you’re on.”  
“I’ll pick you up at seven and we’ll eat beforehand.”  
“Prepare to lose Queen,” she taunted gleefully.  
It was like a press conference before rivals entered a wrestling ring.  
“Save it for tomorrow Smoak.”

They said their goodbyes and, with a smile taped to his mouth, Oliver turned around only to be startled by the smirk of his little sister. He pulled the lapels of his jacket out as he rolled his shoulders and jostled the smile off his face, but it was too late, she had already made him.

“Who were you talking to in this secluded little hallway?” the coltish teenager smirked.  
He offered her a placating smile before he placed his arm around her shoulder. “No one you need to concern yourself with Speedy,” he asserted as he walked her back to the event.

Perhaps he should have just told her.  
After all, curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.

**< <<\-------->>>**

The next night was what could only be described as a ruckus. Felicity made Oliver eat a hotdog with pineapple salsa and in retaliation Oliver made Felicity chow down on a lobster tail roll. Culinary delights aside, the hours ticked away into an effortless night where neither of them suffered the kinds of dips in conversation that made a person realise they were, in essence, on a date.

The score of 220 to Felicity with Oliver having one last turn had drawn a crowd of onlookers with a clear division of who they hoped to win. Oliver needed a strike to win and a chant had started up on his side of the crowd.

Felicity ran a wand of plum lip stain over her lips before she smacked them together and offered Oliver a coquettish smile as he selected a ball.  
“You need a strike to win,” she remarked as she shook her hand through her dark tresses and dropped a shoulder so her black shirt slid down just enough to reveal the satin straps and lace detailing of a bra Oliver was all too familiar with.

It was a flimsy one where the triangle cups were see-through lace and her nipples looked a succulent grape colour beneath it, not to mention the wickedly salacious contrast of the deep ebony atop her alabaster skin. Her red-tipped nails enticed his eyes across her taut clavicle as she drew lazy lines there. He knew what she was doing, but honestly, he was okay being distracted by her feminine wiles.

“If I get it, I win,” he answered with a wink as he selected a green ball and carried it towards the line.  
She leaned against the ball return and stretched one leather clad leg out toward him. “And if you don’t, you lose.”  
“You sound confident,” he noted as he ran his palm over the circumference of the bowling ball. “I wonder what that confidence is worth.”  
She shimmied the shirt back onto her shoulder before she pushed off the ball return and sauntered a few steps closer. “Alright Queen, name your price,” she challenged with her hands playfully on her hips and a brow raised towards her hairline.  
“A kiss,” he simpered.  
She smiled. “A kiss?”  
Oliver nodded, “If I make this shot, one kiss, here and now, on the lips, tongue optional.” That was his wager.  
She lifted onto the balls of the white and red bowling shoes and drifted her lips dangerously close to his. “And if you don’t make the shot?” she asked and he could feel each syllable against his lips.  
“Name your wager,” he rasped, struggling to maintain his composure.

Felicity considered it for a moment before she lowered onto her flat feet and grinned. “A round of beers for our friends here,” she cheered as the watching crowd of at least 30 people broke into raucous applause.  
“Deal,” Oliver determined as he extended his hand and they shook on it.

Oliver missed the shot.  
Seven pins toppled. It wasn’t enough.

The crowd erupted into almost deafening cheering as Oliver bowed graciously to Felicity and her triumphant score. “Looks like the rounds are on me,” he clapped as the swarm headed towards the bar.  
“Get the fancy beer,” Felicity encouraged gleefully before she grabbed Oliver’s arm, spun him back to her and pounced her lips onto his. Tongue reporting for duty.

“Why are we here?” Moira Queen fussed as she walked through the self-opening doors into the electric atmosphere of Murphy’s Bowling Alley. She smoothed the fine dusting of snow from her sleek long-bob and looked around confused. “Are you sure this is where your father said to meet …”

The words froze in her throat as her eyes adjusted to the lane directly in front of them where a very familiar 6ft-something man in a pair of black pants and a coal coloured, knitted sweater was locking lips with a young woman fully clothed in varying shades of black with a head of sleek-black hair.

“Oliver?” his mother gaped moments after Felicity released his lips.  
He looked up and swallowed.

 _Shit_.


	7. Waffles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...almost the end...

 

“Oliver is that you?” the words echoed through Oliver’s head on repeat despite them only having been said the once. There were a lot of other things coursing through his head in exactly this order:  
_Was his fly done up?_  
_Should he hold Felicity’s hand to stop her from running?_  
_Or, should he distract his mother to allow Felicity to make a break for it?_  
_The second seemed the more chivalrous one, but then there would be questions._  
_Did he have an erection right now? He had one a moment ago when she licked her lips and offered her terms of the bet; had it instantly inverted itself ‘back up’? If he looked right now would that just draw attention to it?_  
_Felicity’s lips were incredibly soft. Not new information, but important all the same._

“Mom,” he finally managed to speak, but his voice was thin and stretched like puberty had only just hit him.  
Moira Queen never flinched into emotions, she really should have been the lawyer of the family because the house could literally be burning down around her and you wouldn’t be able to tell her emotions to such an event. She had the poker face to end all poker faces.  
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she remarked, poised with just a hint of a practiced smiled – that meant absolutely nothing – turning up the edges of her lips.

If you blinked, you would miss it, but she turned ever-so-slightly to her daughter at that time and raised a single brow just a fraction, as if to inform the teenager that she was caught in her web of deception, but as of yet the matriarch hadn’t decided what to do with that information.

Oliver was far less reserved. His eyes shot straight to Thea and he was chomping at the bit to chew her out, knowing that this little coincidence was her doing. “I wouldn’t have expected to see you here either,” he leaned in and gave his mother an expected kiss on her cheek. He was too wimpy to look to his left to see if Felicity was even still there but when her hand incidentally brushed against his leg the constraints of his chest relaxed a little at the knowledge that she still was.

She would have preferred not to be.  
She would have preferred, in that very instance, for a sink hole to open up beneath her and swallow her whole. Her fingers itched at her side to dab the edge of her lips, almost certain her lipstick was smudged there as she could see the faint pink gloss she’d left on Oliver’s lips reflecting the light above him.

Oliver didn’t speak much about his family and while Felicity felt that there was love there, she also got the distinct impression that they were the type of family where _a lot_ went unsaid.

“I guess I must have misunderstood dad,” Thea remarked to the crowd of three that didn’t believe her. “I should call him.” She took her phone from her bag and walked far enough away that they wouldn’t actually notice she hadn’t dialled before she put her phone to her ear.

  
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, son?” Moira spoke, again not letting a slight hint of her real emotions slip beyond her composed exterior.  
“This is my…” Oliver paused to look down at Felicity, his eyes begging for her to throw him a life ring.  
“Friend.” She threw it and Oliver caught it with a smile.  
“My _friend_ Felicity,” he finished, managing to swallow down the sigh of relief. “Felicity, this is my mother Moira Queen.”  
Moira held out a perfectly manicured hand and offered her best cordial smile before Felicity took it and shook it for barely a second. “It’s nice to meet you dear,” Moira replied softly, but she was looking at Oliver.  
Felicity swung absently onto the balls of her feet as her thumbs hooked onto the pockets of her leather pants.

Everything about this was awkward for everyone.

“Sorry, he meant come here _someday_ , not today,” Thea said with a shrug as she practically skipped back to the group, her mind praising a job well done. “I guess I should listen more,” she continued flippantly, “but seeing as we’re here. Hi, I’m Thea, Oliver’s little sister,” she pepped as she held out a slender hand.  
Her handshake was far livelier than her mother’s and Felicity couldn’t help but smile as she recounted that this was the same sister that had bought her brother a cat so he could ‘have a pussy on Christmas.’  
“Felicity,” she offered warmly.

**< <<\-------->>>**

No one other than Thea actually understood how everything transpired, but they were all quickly aware that she had some sort of gift of the gab that found them sat around a table with a plate of chilli-cheese fries and a drink each.

“Do you live around here?” Moira asked, and while Felicity couldn’t put her finger on it, there was something sort of backhanded in her question.  
_Maybe she was imaging it?_  
“I’m actually just visiting my mother,” Felicity answered as she wove her fingers through the condensation on her soda glass.  
“Felicity goes to school in Boston,” Oliver added, somewhat unnecessarily, but Felicity found his little pep of her quite adorable.  
“Oh, that’s lovely, is it a school I’d know?”  
Felicity caught herself smiling before she folded her bottom lip into her teeth. “I’m actually in my last year at MIT, I’ll graduate in a couple of months with a double degree.”  
She expected to see some sort of distaste form across the matriarch’s expression, but surprisingly she saw a glimmer of something that looked remarkably like respect.  
Thea, who has been crunching the numbers in her head, looked surprised. “Wait, how old are you?” she asked bluntly.  
“Nineteen,” Felicity answered succinctly.  
“So, you’re like a genius?”  
Felicity gulped down two thirds of her glass, as being on display suddenly felt incredibly overwhelming. “Would you please excuse me for a moment? I just need to use the bathroom,” she remarked as she stood up and grabbed her bag.

For a moment Oliver considered the very real possibility that she was going to try and escape through the bathroom window and he would never see her again and honestly, he wouldn’t be surprised; he’d probably do the same if he thought he could fit.

“Oh, I need to go too so that’s great,” Thea announced as she bounded off her chair.  
Felicity smiled weakly at the youngster, there really wasn’t any way she was getting out of it. “Sure okay, that’ll be fun.”

**< <<\-------->>>**

Despite locking herself in a bathroom stall and committing interfaith by praying to every deity she knew, Felicity was subjected to a barrage of questions from the curious teen who clearly didn’t need to the use the bathroom at all.

“I love your hair, is that your natural hair colour?”  
Felicity looked at her unnaturally dark hair as she sat on the closed toilet seat. “Not quite.”  
“I love your piercing too, I’d love one like that but mom would never let me. Did it hurt? They say it hurts more up there, is that true?” Thea prattled as she fluffed her silky brown hair in the vanity mirror.  
“It hurt a little,” Felicity replied as her fingers pressed small circles into her temple. She just wanted to pee in peace.  
“How long have you and Oliver been sleeping together?” the 13-year old asked casually before she ran a Lip Smacker – Cherry flavoured – across her lips.

Felicity’s head shot up and her eyes flew open like bullets.  
_That was…direct._

**< <<\-------->>>**

“Your friend seems lovely,” Moira remarked as she blew on her instant coffee that she had no actual intention of drinking.  
Oliver stirred the straw through his rum and coke while his eyes watched. “She is.”  
He heard his mother’s heels tap on the floor as she moved in the pleather seat, the aged fabric groaning with each new crease. “You didn’t tell me you were seeing someone.”  
“I’m 23,” he replied as he looked up. “She’s new to town, I was simply showing her around,” he added brusquely.  
“Where did you meet?”  
_Here came the questions._  
“Through work.”  
“How long have you being dating?”  
“We aren’t.”  
“You looked awfully cosy.”  
He sat back and shrugged.  
“I have no intention of meddling in your personal life Oliver…”  
“Then don’t,” he interjected.  
“…but you know what your father would say.”  
He sat rigid in his chair, a litany of a decade worth of thoughts on ‘what his father might say’ sitting on the edge of his tongue, but then he saw Felicity and Thea walking back to the table and he had no desire to put her in the middle of an argument that started long before he met her.

**< <<\-------->>>**

  
Leaving her coffee untouched, Moira stood and smoothed down her designer skirt as she balanced the chain of her _Gucci_ bag in the crook of her elbow. “We’ve imposed enough Thea, we ought to get going,” she said crisply.  
“So Felicity was saying she didn’t have any plans for Christmas day,” Thea chirped in as she left her bag slung over the chair – she wasn’t ready to leave just yet.  
“Oh, I just meant…” Felicity breathed, dangling the unfinished sentence as she tried to come up with the rest of it.  
In reality she had asked Thea what they were doing for Christmas as a way of deflecting from the 13 year old from asking about her brother’s sex life.

“She should come over for Christmas dinner, we always have plenty,” Thea continued, purposefully ignoring the glare Oliver was throwing her.  
Moira offered a charmed, but surprised smile, as the poised hostess in her answered. “I’m sure that would be fine.”  
“Felicity’s Jewish,” Oliver answered as Felicity just stood, blinking slowly in some hope that this was all some strange dream she would wake up from any minute.  
“Does that mean she can’t eat on Christmas?” Thea shot back with a smirk.  
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Oliver growled before Moira cleared her throat, stopping both her children from bickering any further.

“Felicity, we would love to have you around to our house for a Christmas meal if you don’t have other plans. You and Oliver can make the travel arrangements I’m sure. It was lovely to meet you.”  
The older woman took Thea’s handbag off the seat and pushed it into her daughter’s arms before she turned her around and marched her away from the table.

Thea glanced over her shoulder and smiled with a wave as they left.

“Well that was horrific,” Oliver groaned as he smiled apologetically up at Felicity.  
“Oh you didn’t get escorted to the toilet, I did,” Felicity shuddered before her lips broke into a smile.  
Oliver reached for her hand and half expected her to slap it away, but she didn’t. “I’m sorry,” he genuinely apologised. “You don’t have to go to dinner, I can fake an illness so neither of us have to and then it won’t be your fault. I might have to research some really bad illnesses, but it’ll be worth it,” he said gingerly as their fingers entwined and their hands swung gently together.

“I mean, Thea wasn’t wrong when she said I didn’t have plans. Mom is going away with a divorced Jewish women’s club, or something,” she rolled her eyes playfully, “So I was just going to chill at home eating microwave roast beef.”  
Oliver chuckled. “I think we could do one better than microwave roast beef.”  
“Unless you don’t want…”  
He leaned in and kissed the rest of the sentence from her lips. “I’d be honoured to bring you to dinner.”  
“How bad could it be?” she shrugged one shoulder up to her ear.

**< <<\-------->>>**

  
It was the last office day before the break and Oliver felt a strange sense of ease about the impending dinner the next night. He was still half expecting Felicity to pull out of the whole thing, and he wouldn’t have blamed her, but so far things remained just the same.

He tapped his black and gold pen on the bevelled edge of his desk and leaned back in his chair with an indelible smile imprinted on his face; in less than an hour he was dropping tools and leaving work, taking the short walk to where she was interning, meeting up with her (overnight tote bag in toe) before going back to his place where the bones of a meal he intended not to burn was sitting in the fridge.

His fanciful daydream about what they would do _after_ dinner was interrupted by a stone-faced John Diggle as he stomped into the office, clearly annoyed, and slumped down into one of the chairs on the opposite side of Oliver’s desk.

“It went well then?” Oliver smirked as he pushed his chair back from his desk, crossed his legs and settled in for a story.  
John’s lips tightened and his brow pinched, almost pained, inwards for a few moments before his face relaxed entirely. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered gruffly.  
The _it_ being a client mediation that both Oliver and John knew wasn’t going to end well; and which absolutely didn’t.

“In that case,” Oliver started as he stood from his chair and sauntered over to his filing cabinet where he’d left some research John had asked him to collate, “I got the cases you were after. I took the liberty to mark a few of the relevant paragraphs of the judgment, I think it will…”  
Oliver stopped as he turned back to John who had, while Oliver was talking, leaned in and collected a business card from the holder near the edge of his desk.

“Divorce lawyer?” John remarked as he folded Oliver's business card between his large fingers.  
Oliver's brow twitched, confused, before he chuckled softly to himself while his cheeks flushed a warm shade of red. “Felicity,” he spoke under his breath but not so quietly that it went unheard.  
“What does the little goth genius have to do with this?” John asked as he tapped the same card with the handwritten scrawl on the edge of Oliver's desk.

Oliver straightened his tie and stiffened his back as he walked towards his desk. “Inside joke,” he offered while he dropped the research near John, hoping to change the subject.  
John stood, brushed his palms down the front of his navy pants and walked over to Oliver's door. Wordlessly he closed it with a gentle _click_ before he returned to his seat, only this time with straight lips and narrowed eyes. “So it's true?”  
Oliver clicked his knuckles and focused on a crumb left on his desk near the edge he was leaning against. “I'm not sure what you're implying.”  
“Cut the bullshit,” his mentor retorted, “you know exactly what I'm talking about. You and Felicity, are you sleeping together?”

Oliver's throat constricted as he dragged his eyes up from the desk. “That's really none of your business,” he answered.  
“So you are.” John ran a troubled hand through his hair. “I heard the rumours but I must say I wasn't expecting you to be this stupid.”

The younger man pushed himself off the desk and walked a tight track from his desk to the window and then to his chair before he folded his arms over the top of it.  
“Hypothetically if it was true, what does it matter? She's an adult. She's not my client,” Oliver argued with deceptively calm eyes, despite the fact he was a turbulent sea of thoughts.  
“Oh ethically you're in the clear,” John shrugged loosely, “but suppose this turns to shit, you really want that reputation to follow you? Let's say you manage to keep your client after this gets out, and you lose her case, you know what people are going to pin that on? Your cock.”

Oliver’s back stiffened and his lips tightened. “All due respect John, but none of this is your concern.”  
His mentor seemed more bothered than Oliver would have expected him to, and the tension between them was palpable. “No, it's not my reputation on the line here, it's yours. All the same I put my neck out for you,” John spoke gruffly and his palms landed loudly on the edge of the desk as he propelled himself out of the chair.  
“And what about you and Lyla?” Oliver shot back.  
“What about it?”  
“Come on, you think you're any better at hiding this than me?” Oliver laughed roughly. “Where there are _actual_ policies in place, but I've said jackshit to you or anyone else because I respect you.”  
Oliver could feel the heat in his own words and the bite of them was enough to make John settle down a notch. “I’m just saying you need to be careful. Don’t make a reputation for yourself because you’re relying on your last name to see you through,” he warned with terse lips.

He could feel the implications loud and clear from John’s raised brow; _don’t break her heart._ But Oliver had already long considered the very likelihood that it wouldn’t be her mending a broken heart, it would be him.

“Does your dad know about this?” John asked, bridging the silence.  
Oliver grimaced as he took a sharp inhale. “He’s about to,” he answered, exhaling.

  
**< <<\-------->>>**

“Mmmm, that was…” Felicity sighed as she rolled her naked body off Oliver's and gently bit his arm.  
“Hungry?” he laughed as he brushed back her damp hair.  
Her eyes were wide and mischievous and her lips were swollen and marred with tiny crimson nicks where her teeth had brought the blood to the surface. Her cheeks were flushed and her entire skin was glowing with a beautiful sheen. It was utterly undeniable how downright ravished she looked and just how perfectly she suited it.

“Famished,” she remarked as she sat up on an elbow.  
His fingertip circled her coiled nipple as her breast floated above him. The sheets were crumpled near the end of the bed and the opulent cover was heaped onto the floor. There was something risqué and sexual about lying like that after sex, exposed, saturated in sweat, hot with the smell of each other, slippery and carnal.

“I’ll make you something,” he offered, his voice husky and whispered; a result of the panting and moaning from earlier.  
“Waffles,” she declared with a flirty laugh.  
He pushed himself up off the mattress and captured her lips with his before his bulky body collapsed back onto the mattress with a huffed chuckle. “Waffles?”  
She teased a small wisp of hair at his pubic line. “Don’t tell me you have the world’s most luxurious bed linen but you don’t have a waffle iron?”  
She sat up and tucked her legs under that absolutely _fucking_ perfect ass of hers. His fingers trailed across her collarbone and down her centre, tracing the soft concave of her belly and the piercing she had there.  
“I actually don’t,” he shrugged.

She bounded off the bed and his entire body pined for her to return, stretching across the bed until she was out of reach.  
“Come on, we're going to the mall,” she announced as she paraded around the room naked and in search of the clothes strewn across it.  
“It’s Christmas Eve,” he laughed as he caught the pair of blue jeans she threw at him.  
“So?”  
“It will be bedlam.”

She tapped her fingertip to her lip before her mouth turned up into a coy smile. “Have you ever had sex in a mall Oliver?”  
Balancing his body on his hands splayed behind him, Oliver cocked his head to the side and lifted a single eyebrow toward his hairline.  
“I’ll take that as a no, you’re far too highbrow for that, aren’t you Oliver the divorce lawyer?” She wiggled as she spoke and his lips smacked hungrily together.

“What are you suggesting?” he cooed, his eyes soaking up her sinful curves and how she moved them.  
She threw him a long-sleeve Henley and winked. “Get dressed and I’ll show you.”

**< <<\-------->>>**

Bedlam was an understatement.  
The mall was a crush of frantic people all vying for last minute presents and deals in a flurry of American Express cards and pensive brows; but only an hour after getting there, they had what they came for – which was quite the feat for Christmas Eve.

Oliver was waiting for Felicity, waffle iron secured in the bag that swung from his wrist, as she perused a collection of nail varnishes she wasn’t prepared to walk past. He leaned back on the glass cabinetry in the jewellery department when something caught his eye.

It took him less than a minute to decide to get it; and in what could only be described as some act of fate or a Christmas Eve miracle, it took about the same time to ring up the impulsive sale. So just as Felicity finished up Oliver snuck the small box into the pocket of his navy peacoat before she walked over to meet him.

“What are you looking at? Another fake wedding ring?” she laughed softly as his arm snaked around her waist.  
For a minute he thought she might pull away from the display of affection, but she didn’t, and instead slipped her hand into the back pocket of his indigo jeans and left it there.  
“Just something for Thea,” he fibbed, “But I’m done.”  
“Okay good, come on,” she beamed as she squeezed his ass cheek.  
“Where are we going?”  
Her face lit up with a playful grin. “Movie theatre.”  
“You want to watch a movie?”  
She shook her head before she winked; _nope_.

**< <<\-------->>>**

The movie had already started when they crept in and took a seat in the far back corner of the theatre. It was a foreign film Oliver had never heard of and clearly most of Starling City had no interest in as there were only half a dozen other people in the cinema.

He still wasn’t sure what they were doing there, but he humoured her whim as he sat back into his chair and tried to focus on the couple arguing on the screen.

“This is going to be a great movie,” she whispered near his ear before her lips gently tugged on his lobe.  
“I don’t know what it’s about,” Oliver replied softly, all while keeping his eyes straight ahead.  
She dragged her lips from his lobe to the tip of his jaw where she lightly nicked it with her teeth and soothed it with her tongue. “Silly Oliver the divorce lawyer, it’s not about the movie.”

She reached into the box of popcorn on his lap and took a handful. “Do you know what I think is underrated?” she asked as she snuggled her body close to his.  
“What?” he questioned, the lingered smile still on his lips.  
She finished the last of her handful of popcorn, leaving the question hanging for a few silent moments, before she leaned a little closer and whispered her answer, “Hand jobs.”

His head snapped towards her just in time to watch her lick the palm of her hand with slow and even strokes of her tongue until it was damp with her spit.

Oliver jolted as her slender hand teased out the button on his jeans and slid under the elastic of his briefs before snaking around his throbbing cock. He sucked in stale air that tasted like popcorn as she gripped him tightly and tugged, the moistness of her spit acting like a lubricant.

Her strokes were long and slow to start off with and Oliver soon found himself white-knuckling the arm of the seat while all the blood rushed to his shaft. He sobbed out a hushed moan when she lifted her leg and draped it over his, opening her legs under her grey, plaid skirt. The knee-high sock slid a little down her leg as she tucked her chunky boot in behind Oliver’s other knee and locked it there. His eyes travelled up the milky curves of her thigh as she dipped her free hand under the hem of her mini-skirt.

He almost choked on his tongue as he watched her settle back into her seat and start moving both her hands in unison; the one pumping tight and paced beats up and down his throbbing cock while the other – he was absolutely certain – was pleasuring herself.

He knew he was staring, his eyes were getting so dry because of his inability to blink, and she knew he was staring too by the smile that lifted up the corners of her lips.

“Do you like watching?” she whispered and he read her mouth before answering with a languid nod. He watched the flush set across her cheeks as she leaned back a little and bit the edge of her lip; just like he’d seen her do before.

She twisted her fingers inside her pulsing entrance, slick with her own arousal as she watched his eyes devour the sight; as much as he could see anyway. When her fingers were damp with her juices, Felicity slipped it out from between her legs, snapped her hand out from behind his trunks and moved to the vacant seat on the other side of him. Before Oliver had a chance to question her, she slid her wet hand into his pants and started jerking him off again.

She pressed her thighs together and knelt on the seat beside him before she wet her lips and kissed the throbbing pulse point at the front of his throat. Dragging her lips up his jaw she relished in the friction his beard made against the inside of her bottom lip before she reached his ear.

“Do you want to come here Oliver?” she growled huskily into his ear as her thumb swooped over his sensitive slit, making his whole body jolt reactively.  
He licked his lips and felt the sweat beading across his brow as his breathing became erratic.  
“Yes,” he managed to answer, the word thin and strangled.  
“Put your hand between my legs and hold it there,” she ordered before she fluttered three soft kisses behind his ear which made Oliver gulp down a desperate moan.

He did as she asked and pushed his hand between her tightly clamped thighs. His palm rested on her mound and his fingers stretched out down her sex.  
“Can you feel the heat Oliver?” she hummed into his ear as the background noise of the movie ground out his quivered ‘yes’.

He could feel the heat radiating off her like an oven, even through the tight weave of her cotton panties. His fingers ached to touch her, to slide a finger in and out of her wet entrance, but she was holding his wrist tightly between her thighs to limit his movement.

She nuzzled her nose into the top of his cheek. “Do you want to touch me Oliver?”  
“Yes,” he rasped, needy and salacious.  
“If you pass the test and you don’t touch me here, then when we get home I’ll let you watch me, just like that first time you walked into my room. Remember that?” she hummed against his damp skin.  
He swallowed what felt like a watermelon down his throat as he recounted the way she’d looked, spread open and naked on her bed, teasing her clit and running a vibrator through her glistening folds.  
“Promise?” he managed to say through a strained jaw as he held back his insatiable desire.  
He could feel her smiling as she kissed his ruddy cheek. “I promise.”  
He clenched his other hand around the armrest and tensed his shoulders.

“Do you still want to come here Oliver?”  
He couldn’t answer her with any coherency as he focused on keeping the hand between her legs still amidst her sweltering heat; so he simply nodded, far more feverishly than he needed.  
“Good,” she effused, blowing warm air down his moist skin. “Lighter or harder?” she asked as her strokes maintained the same rhythm up and down his shaft, her thumb circling over the end before pressing into the underside and dragging it down his taut skin.

“Harder,” he pleaded as he frantically lathed his bottom lip with his tongue.  
She gripped his thick cock tighter, strangling it between her nimble fingers. “Faster or slower?”  
His eyes rolled up towards the ceiling, lit with the occasional hazy reflections from the movie screen.  
“Faster.”  
“Do you want to come here Oliver?” she asked for a third time as she felt his cock straining in her hand, each pulse of blood massaging her fingers and each slip of her thumb over his head getting wetter.  
“Yes,” he breathed, his voice so tight it felt almost painful to speak.  
“Then do it,” she whispered clearly into his ear as she rode up against his shaking palm. “Come right here into my hand.”  
He could feel his body shuddering in his seat and he could hear the echoing of his heavy panting through his brain as his orgasm surged through his body and exploded like liquid ribbons into her hand.

She kept working his cock, spreading his release up and down the shaft as he struggled to gain some semblance of normal breathing while his chest rose and fell with fitful variance.

His body finally started to relax and his lips turned into a dopey smile as the last of his release bled into his softening cock. She kissed the wingtip of his lips as she eased up on her pumping before stopping completely. Her hand emerged from his pants with only a few glossy remnants of his spend left on her skin.

Oliver watched, wide eyed and mesmerised, as Felicity fed just her index finger slowly between her puckered lips and sucked.  
“Mmm, salty,” she hummed as she lifted her body off his hand and guided it back onto his lap.  
Silently she fed each one of her fingers into her mouth the same way before she sat back into her chair like nothing had ever happened.

Oliver looked down at his open fly and chuckled. He’d really never met anyone like Felicity Smoak.  
“So,” she said softly while she reached over and grabbed another fistful of popcorn, “is there a dress code for tomorrow night?”


	8. Crack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Penultimate chapter...

“It’s not too late you know,” Oliver remarked as he and Felicity stopped ahead of the sprawling Queen mansion. It was always strange to him how, despite growing exponentially taller, his parents’ home never seemed to get any ‘smaller’. “You could fake an injury or a sudden illness,” he jested, although half-serious. “Just say the word.”

Felicity chuckled and a smokestack of warm air billowed up into the chilly night as her eyes took in as much as they could of the ornate, designer Christmas decorations that were dripping from every eve and illuminating almost everywhere she looked.

“You seem more anxious about this than I do,” she teased as she rubbed her gloved hands together. She had managed to find something that felt appropriate to wear in the back of Donna’s closet, a somewhat-reserved (for her mother at least) black cocktail dress with capped, lace sleeves and an open back, which she paired with a camel coat and black pumps. It wasn’t exactly her usual attire (a phrase she had seen herself think more than a few times since becoming _involved_ with Oliver) but it was enough of her aesthetic to be comfortable.

Oliver paused at the bottom of the front stairs and clasped her hand a little tighter. “Maybe I am,” he admitted with a reluctant smile.  
“Are you embarrassed by me?” Felicity asked bluntly; a question that needed to be both asked and answered.  
“You? No,” he answered as he shook his head fervently before he rolled his eyes and continued, “Them however? Yes, absolutely.”  
She smiled as she knocked her elbow into his arm. “Come on fraidy cat.”

**< <<\-------->>>**

Oliver snuck in the front door without knocking, in the hope to carve out a few more precious moments where his family weren’t descending on them like a stage show. It wasn’t that he had a particular idea about how this would play out in his head, if anything it was quite the opposite, he had no idea how this night would unravel, and it was that unknowing that was gnawing away at his stomach.

The foyer echoed with the sound of Felicity’s shoes on the opulent marble tiles before his hands grazed the backs of her shoulders. “Can I take your coat?” he asked smoothly in her ear, sending a wake of bumps down her spine.  
Wordlessly she unbuttoned the same and let her eyes lull closed as his fingertips brushed her neck while the coat slipped off her frame.

She let out a breathy sigh when Oliver stooped a little and brushed an airy kiss at the slope of her neck, and lingered to breathe in the subtle notes of her perfume; _vanilla_.

The warm air embraced Felicity as the aroma of a cooking meal tiptoed over her senses. She wasn’t immediately gobsmacked by the house, although it was beautiful and decorated with handpicked items that wouldn’t be seen anywhere near a catalogue, because Donna’s last husband was just as wealthy, but there was something more homely about the Queen mansion that Felicity wasn’t expecting.

She supposed, quite wrongly, that the house would feel sterile and stagnant and that every corner would have been perfectly orchestrated to make one think of wealth and perfection. She had imagined a staged affair much like she had seen in the photograph in Oliver's office, what she got was pleasantly different, albeit still as polished as she’d expected; just less _posed_.

“No one knows we're here yet,” Oliver whispered as he smoothed kisses up the threads of her neck towards her ear. “My old bedroom is right up these stairs.”  
Felicity’s eyes wandered up the dark-oak staircase as a smile hooked her lips. “Do you think we can make it?” she asked with an impish whisper.  
He nibbled on her ear lobe while his nose brushed against her earring. “I think we can make it.”  
He clasped her hand into his and headed for the stairs, but they hadn’t quite reached the first step when Thea appeared in a dazzling red dress and a headband with antlers.  
“Whomp, whomp,” Felicity teased into Oliver’s ear.  
“Felicity, Oliver you’re here!” Thea enthused, “I didn’t hear you come in.”  
“So close,” Oliver mumbled as his lips formed a measured smile for his sister’s benefit.  
But Thea couldn’t have appeared more disinterested in him if she’d tried. She had another target.  
“I found a ladder in my stocking and I’m having a little crises,” she grimaced as she glanced down at the seemingly flawless stockings. “I could use another woman’s opinion.” She shone a smile and a pair of pleading eyes Felicity’s way.  
“You’re 13, hardly a woman,” Oliver interjected. He may have still been a little on the odds with her about the stunt she’d pulled arriving at Murphy’s.

She rolled her eyes at him before she brushed him off with a shrug. “Mom is waiting for you in the study with the others?”  
“The others?” Oliver’s eyebrow lifted; he hadn’t been informed of any ‘others’.  
“Can’t stop and chat,” Thea smirked before she threw another pleading look Felicity’s way.  
“Sure,” Felicity sighed, imagining she had a choice before she got tugged up the stairs by the enthusiastic teen, pausing for a moment at the landing to offer Oliver a tiny wave.

Once inside Thea’s room, the younger Queen tore the antlers off her head and biffed them towards a little white writing desk, but missing it by a foot. She looked at the discarded Christmas gimmick on the floor and shrugged.

“So, stockings,” Felicity started, popping her lips as she spoke while her hands wrung over each other. “I’m not really an expert after all I prefer mine _with_ holes in, they’re more edgy that way,” she jested, making herself smile.  
“I might have lied,” Thea admitted with a smile that seemed tried and tested for getting her out of trouble. “I don’t have a run in my stockings.”  
“You don't say,” Felicity said with a dramatic gasp; Felicity knew there was no stocking emergency, but she was curious why Thea had made one up to spirit her away.

Felicity didn’t have to wait long to find out.  
“I just wanted to apologise for the other night. I didn’t mean for things to happen that way,” Thea sighed as she flopped down on her bed like the weight of the world sat across her svelte shoulders. “I heard Oliver making arrangements with you and he just seemed so happy,” she reminisced, smiling briefly as she recounted eavesdropping on Oliver’s conversation. “I wanted to see it for myself but _of course_ I’m grounded a million different ways so the only chance I had of leaving the house was taking Moira with me.”

Thea sighed heavily again as Felicity leaned against a white set of drawers, allowing the young girl time to continue. “I assumed I’d just spot you two from a distance, put my curious heart to rest and leave before Oliver even saw us, what I got was…”  
“...something quite different,” Felicity surmised.  
“Yeah, that,” Thea grimaced. “Anyway, I’m really sorry,” she ran her palms down her dress, tugging it over her knees, “I guess I’m also kind of sorry for setting the wheels in motion for this dinner. You just seem so different.”  
Felicity’s smile furrowed a little across her lips, unsure if that was a compliment or not. “Uh, thanks?”  
“No, it’s a good thing,” Thea assured her as she ran a comb of fingers through her wavy hair. “Oliver’s other girlfriends have been just the worst.”  
“They can’t be all that bad,” Felicity placated.  
“They’re nice enough but it’s like having a conversation with mashed potatoes.”  
“That’s vivid imagery,” Felicity applauded with a laugh.  
“It’s true though,” Thea added when she stood up. “I just wanted to meet the person who was making my brother happy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him happy,” Thea continued to muse as she walked towards the door. “Anyway, I’m really sorry for ruining your date.”

Felicity was going to reply something along the lines of ‘it wasn’t a date’, but her mouth and mind had other plans she wasn’t privy to until the words spilled out of her mouth.  
“What do you mean you’ve never seen him happy, why?” Felicity asked.  
Thea raised her hands, palms up to the ceiling, as she shrugged. “Look around you, Oliver is the heir to all of this. He’s been primed since before I was born to take over the generational legacy,” she continued, making air quotes with her fingers. “But it’s not what he wants,” she hummed, snapping her lips together as she wondered whether she’d said too much.  
Felicity recalled what Oliver had told her before, and she nodded along to what Thea had said. “I know,” she answered softly.  
“He’s told you?” Thea questioned, a smile filling out her cheekbones and making her shoulder’s relax. But before Felicity could answer, the young girl added, “good, I’m glad he has someone to talk to.”

She skulked around the room a little and stopped to pick up the discarded antlers before she perched on the edge of her writing desk and continued. “No one expects much out of me, I was the accident. I’m the one that they’ll bury tabloid stories about and make drink driving convictions disappear for, but Oliver…” his name came out like a depressed sigh, “has so much pressure to be like my dad, and his dad and his dad before him. Most siblings would be jealous that he gets all the attention, but I feel so bad for him, always having to be what other people expect. He seemed different with you, relaxed, it was nice to see.”

“And what about you?” Felicity asked pointedly, she had been whisked away on the pretence of a stocking emergency so she decided that allowed her some room to pull up the younger Queen on her own ambitions.  
“What about me?” Thea shrugged, decidedly angst.  
“Do you _want_ to be the walking tabloid story?”  
A breathy chuckle preceded a lethargic sigh. “It’s my destiny,” Thea bemoaned. “The most important decision I have to make is what colour dress I’ll wear to cotillion.”

“Only if you let it be,” Felicity shot back. “We can’t be limited by what other people think of us, the only limits we have are the ones we put on ourselves.”  
“Calendar?”  
“Coffee cup actually,” Felicity smiled. “Don’t be what people expect of you,” she added, glancing at herself in the mirror, “it’s much more fun to be unexpected. What do you want?”

Thea ran another comb of fingers through her hair, no one had ever asked her that question before and while she had an answer it wasn’t one she spoke about often. “It’s kinda stupid.”  
Felicity cocked her head to one side and furrowed her lips and brow. “I doubt that.”  
“A wildlife photographer,” Thea answered quietly, “Stupid right?”  
“I think that’s pretty awesome actually,” Felicity said pragmatically, “and I happen to think Oliver would too.” She paused to offer her a reassuring smile. “You don’t want him to live a life that isn’t by his own making, his own choice, right?”  
Thea answered almost immediately, “Of course not.”  
“So why settle for that for yourself.”

It was that simple.

**< <<\-------->>>**

Oliver’s chest constricted with every step closer to the study. As he got closer to the cracked door, he heard a gentle nattering of voices. He struggled to identify each and every one, but before he could, the family’s housekeeper and former nanny, greeted him with a broad smile and a boisterous encouragement. “Yes, Yes, inside Oliver.”

She ferried him into the study; which was more like a formal lounge with it Chesterfield couches and bespoke artwork. The fire was roaring and the mantle was tastefully decorated in a pinecone wreath and glittery baubles in a different colour palate than the year before. It smelled like chestnuts in the room, despite Oliver being certain none had ever actually been roasted there, and it wouldn’t have surprised him if the housekeepers had gone around strategically placing bowls of pre-roasted chestnuts for ambience’s sake.

He was greeted first by his mother’s demure smile, held with a hint of surprise as she noted a certain absence. On the second cheek kiss Oliver remarked that Felicity was “with Thea upstairs and would be down soon.”

He couldn’t completely read Moira’s expression when they pulled away, but he was fairly certain it was agreeable. The next face he met with was a familiar but seldom seen one and it instantly brought a beaming smile to his own face.  
“Tommy!” he announced heartily, “the wanderer has returned.”  
The two old friends embraced with a series of back slaps, wholly suitable for the childhood friends who hadn’t seen each other in close to a year.  
“Surprised?” Tommy regaled.  
Oliver’s hand cupped his friend’s shoulder, still in disbelief he was standing in front of him. “I am, what are you doing here?”  
“In your study or in Starling in general?” Tommy jested, his shoulders shaking under the burgundy sports coat he was wearing. Tommy Merlyn had been abroad since leaving college; chasing venture capital opportunities everywhere from Dubai to Japan, escaping Starling for reasons that were his own, but known to Oliver.  
“Whirlwind tour I’m afraid, but it seems I planned my trip right and the ever-gracious Moira Queen set an extra seat at the table for us,” Tommy said with a delightful smile.  
“Us?” Oliver probed with one brow lifted higher than the other.  
Captivated by the shock of his old friend’s presence, Oliver hadn’t noticed the other surprising face in the room until Tommy pointed him out.  
“Oliver, this is Hiro, the other part of the ‘us’,” Tommy revealed as he introduced a youthful Japanese man with an exuberant smile and a stiff handshake.  
“You finally came out to your father?” Oliver surmised, rightly.  
“Yes,” Tommy swayed on the heels of his loafers, “and that is why I’m having dinner at your house, not my own,” he added, the inference that it didn’t go so well clearly noted.  
Oliver squeezed his shoulder. “Tommy, I’m sorry.”  
“Don’t be,” he replied, he had made his peace with his father a long time before. “It’s his loss, not mine.” Changing the subject, Tommy continued, “Hiro is a lawyer too, he works with amnesty and refugee cases, he has some fascinating stories.”  
Oliver nodded politely at both men but his lips grew a little terse at Tommy; because the life-long friend knew Oliver’s goals and had always been forthcoming about the fact Oliver should be following them and not ones set for him to be the pitbull litigation lawyer.

“Ah, the kind of work us lawyers do before we die to polish up the halo for the man upstairs,” Robert Queen joked, weighing in on the conversation that wasn’t lost on him either.  
“His firm is always looking for more young lawyers to cut their teeth on cases,” Tommy continued.  
Robert slapped a weighty hand against Oliver’s shoulder. “I’m sure when Oliver needs the good deed for Senate nod, a few cases on the CV would look good.”

There was a brief moment where Oliver wanted nothing more than to denounce every word his father was saying and every moment of his life that had somehow been managed to be forged without him, but now was not that time and, as he resigned himself to that, Thea returned with Felicity.

It didn’t go unnoticed that Thea’s stockings were identical to the ones she had been wearing before.

“Dinner is served,” were the next words spoken into the room, and that was that.

**< <<\-------->>>**

“So it’s a rare opportunity to meet one of Oliver’s girlfriends,” Tommy remarked offhandedly, his voice breaking the ambient noise of fine silver cutlery clinking against bone China plates.  
Felicity swallowed her mouthful of crispy potatoes and smiled, “Oh we’re not.”  
“They’re just friends,” Moira pointed out, masking a knowing smile behind a white linen napkin.  
“Of course, my mistake,” Tommy chuckled as Oliver’s throat choked his breath. “It’s a rare opportunity to meet one of Oliver’s _friends_ , who’s a girl,” he corrected with a smirk. “What do you do in Starling?”  
It was Thea though that answered. “She’s just visiting.”  
“Felicity attends a very prestigious college in Boston,” Moira added, to almost everyone’s surprise that she even remembered.  
“I guess what they said,” Felicity remarked.  
“What school?”  
Felicity opened her mouth to answer but she needn’t have bothered.  
“MIT,” Thea declared.  
Tommy laughed. “Very prestigious then,” he took a sip of wine, “should I ask you or them what you’re studying?”  
“Don’t be silly Thomas,” Moira rebuked casually.  
Felicity's smile floundered over her expression. “I’m studying Cyber Security and Computer Sciences.”   
“She graduates in a few months and she’s only 19!” Thea said proudly.  
“Wow impressive,” Tommy spoke with a genuine amount of awe. “I might have my hands in a few pies that are looking to recruit some brilliant minds, I could pass your CV along.”  
“Oh no, that’s fine,” Felicity answered before she sipped back her water, a sudden dryness twisting her throat.  
“Honestly, you’d be doing me a favour not them,” Tommy pleaded, missing the tension building across Oliver’s brow.  
“Oh, it’s not that, I’m just not looking for a job right now.”  
She dabbed the corner of the napkin to her lips.  
“Already snatched up aye? I hope Oliver has sold you on Starling, it’s an up and comer in the tech world.”  
The dryness in her throat turned into a lump. “I’m sure it is, but no.”  
She could see the pluck of bemusement in Tommy’s brow and it felt like the table fell into a state that mirrored it.

Oliver cleared his throat with a hefty cough. “Felicity is travelling after graduation.”  
“A few weeks abroad sounds amazing,” Thea cheered, suddenly filling the lull. “Oliver could use the holiday, he’s all work and no play, when was the last time you went on…”  
The tension was apparent to everyone else around the table but the young teen.  
“Thea, that’s enough dear,” Moira spoke up.

“I’m not going,” Oliver simpered, palm flat on the table, eyes unanimated.  
“And I’m going for longer than a few weeks,” Felicity added.  
“A month?” Thea innocently quizzed.  
“At least a year, maybe indefinitely.”  
Thea looked between Felicity and Oliver, an invisible wall between them. “But how will you and...”  
“Thea, dear,” her mother interjected before the awkwardness completely swallowed the table. “Maybe we should let Felicity eat, we wouldn’t want the food to go cold.”

**< <<\-------->>>**

Tommy and his boyfriend had left with the promise of a longer catch up soon and the night had drawn well along when Oliver found himself sequestered to his father’s study (also known as the cigar room).

Begrudgingly he left Felicity with Thea and stood a few feet from his father with his arms banded across his chest. Robert Queen had said virtually nothing all night and while he offered a few placating smiles Felicity’s way when she was mentioned, he did little to engage.

Knowing his father as he did, Oliver already knew which way this conversation would steer.

“What are you doing Oliver?” Robert didn’t beat around the bush as he took a cigar from the teak case and offered another to Oliver.  
Oliver shook his head to the offer. “In general father or do you want to be more specific?” he shot back with a tiresome sigh.  
Robert shrugged half-heartedly before he clipped the end of the cigar and brought it to his lips to light.  
But Oliver stole it from his puckered lips and dropped it to the desk. “Mom hates these in the house, save it for the gentleman’s club.”  
“Speaking of,” Robert began, “membership is still waiting for you.”  
Oliver had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. “Still not interested.”  
“It’s a great place to make connections,” Robert continued, collecting the cigar from the desk and ignoring Oliver’s previous scolding. He lit it, drew in a puff and continued, “you can’t rely solely on your last name.”  
Oliver scoffed at his father’s words before he banded his arms across his chest and paced in a small circle to vent his bubbling seething. “I have no intention of doing that, but I also have no intention of sitting in an aroma of old spice and cigars,” he brushed the smoke back from his face, “while old men ogle strippers,” he stopped to let out a small chuckle, “I’m sorry ‘nearly naked, dancing cocktail waitresses’ young enough to be their granddaughters.”  
Robert wasn’t bothered by Oliver’s spiked tongue, if anything seeing his spawn with a fire lit under his ass gave him a few moments of pride.

“That’s where your legacy was built,” he reminded Oliver as he pointed the smouldering Cuban towards a photo of his father and grandfather.  
“Your legacy, not mine,” Oliver corrected, a small hiss in his tone.  
“Don’t act so pious Oliver,” Robert jested. “Save that for when you run for Senate.”  
Oliver’s eyes rolled towards the ceiling as his lips tightened and his jaw clenched. It was like having an argument with a brick wall and he had no time or patience for that right then.  
“Is that all father? I have a guest.”

**< <<\-------->>>**

Felicity found herself in the quiet hall, listening to the voices rising as she walked passed the closed door on her way back from the bathroom.

She knew she should probably leave, that whatever argument Oliver was having with his father wasn’t any of her business; and yet no matter how hard she tried, her feet just wouldn’t budge.

**< <<\-------->>>**

  
Robert snuffed out the cigar; his point had been made with it. “What are you doing with her Oliver? Is this some rebellion it took you a few years to come to?” he asked, a resonating sigh carrying through each word.  
Oliver felt his throat constrict and his eye slim with rage. “Not now,” he warned.  
“If not now, when?” he continued even as Oliver walked towards the door. “You have priorities. After you make partner indiscretions can be overlooked.”  
“Indiscretions?” Oliver laughed bitterly, “Is that what you call it now?”

Robert shuffled a hand through his greying hair and shrugged. It was hardly a secret; it was just no one ever openly spoke about it.  
“Look she seems like a nice girl, I don’t have anything against her. I was listening at dinner, she’s a hell of a smart girl too. I’m not arguing that Oliver, but look around, look at your life. This doesn’t seem like the type of life she would fit into or even want.”  
“You don’t know the first thing about her,” Oliver shot back as his shoulders inflated and the threads of his neck pulsed.  
“And after a few weeks, you do? We have a plan son,” Robert announced before Oliver took another two steps towards the door; it was a plan he’d heard many, many times before. “Associate, Partner, marriage to one of the country club girls with excellent credentials, pop out a child for the picture perfect life.” He followed Oliver towards the door, “Treat her to expensive gifts and she’ll probably let a few trips to Boston slide. Best of both worlds. That’s how it works.”  
“That’s your life,” Oliver spat.

**< <<\-------->>>**

  
Felicity’s eyes startled when, just as Oliver’s last words echoed through the hall, Moira appeared.  
“I wasn’t listening, I just, I was coming back from the bathroom,” Felicity offered quickly as she finally moved her feet.  
“My husband has a very loud voice so it would hardly be your fault if you did hear,” Moira remarked as she walked a little ahead of Felicity. “He is also an outdated fool with imprudent notions that no intelligence person should pay any mind to and he doesn’t speak for us all.” The matriarch stopped an offered Felicity a knowing smile. “Especially not Oliver.”

**< <<\-------->>>**

Robert’s face remained mellow. “It’s our life.”  
Oliver shook his head as his anger subsided and was replaced with pity. Pity for the man who built his house on fallacies and pretences. Pity for the man he’d spent too many informative years looking up to, and even longer trying to emulate and please. “No, it’s yours. I don’t want it.”

Oliver stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him. He took two sharp breaths in an attempt to quell the eruption of anger that scolded his body from the inside. When he’d finally managed to subdue it, he looked up and found Felicity standing there.

Wordlessly he took her hand and led her upstairs, down the hall and into his old bedroom; which hadn’t changed since he’d left it years before.

“Nice room,” Felicity remarked as her eyes traversed the blues and greys that decorated the expansive, and impeccably tidy, room. She took a few steps forward and picked a photo frame off a cleared-down study desk. “Is this the ex?” she asked, pointing the smiling blonde a much younger Oliver had his arm around.

He fumbled a hand through his hair and dropped a heavy sigh. “Sorry, I haven’t been in this room for a long time, I didn’t know this was still here,” he lamented.  
“It’s fine Oliver, I’m not the jealous type,” Felicity assured him as she turned towards him with a smile. “She was pretty though.” _Blonde, tall, slender, filled out top._  
“I suppose,” he shrugged, “a bore to talk to though.”  
_Mashed potatoes_ Felicity found herself smiling at the imagery Thea had given her.  
  
“How much did you hear?” Oliver asked, his brow fraught with trepidation.  
“Enough to wonder how you turned out so nice,” she remarked with a light shrug.  
“We either become the sins of our parents or we fight against every inclination to be just like them,” he offered poignantly. “I’m sorry about what you heard.”  
“You don’t need to apologise for words that weren’t yours Oliver.”  
He reached out his hand and she took it, threading her fingers through his.

“He’s not right you know,” Oliver said softly.  
“About most things I’m sure,” she replied with a fond smile lifting up the edges of her scarlet lips. “That you’d ever marry someone for the family portrait or keep a girl on the side for starters. You’re not that kind of person, a couple of weeks knowing you and I’m sure of that.”  
“But?” He could sense one coming.  
“But he’s not necessarily wrong about me,” she admitted quietly.  
“I don’t understand.”  
She sighed as she looked around the large bedroom with all its fancy trimmings. “The big house, the smiles on display life, the country club, none of it is me.”  
“It’s not me either,” Oliver retorted.  
She squeezed his hand and offered a reassuring smile. “Maybe not what your dad has or to this extent, but you can’t tell me on some level it’s not what you want, what you're used to, where you feel safe. A family, a white picket fence, galas and family vacations over Christmas.” His brow pulled inwards as she continued. “That’s not a bad thing Oliver. You want something settled and comfortable and some lucky girl is going to love that about you.”

 _But not her._  
He heard the first crack of his heart.


	9. Whirlwind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter...

****

 

 **Sometimes the best journeys are the ones you never planned on taking;**  
**And the ones you plan on never forgetting.**

Days slid into a week and a week passed over into a month and before he knew it, Oliver was adjusting his tie in the bedroom mirror, readying himself for Court.

He glanced a little towards the left of the mirror and caught Felicity’s reflection as she sat on the edge of the bed, bent over while she fastened the straps of her ‘Courtroom-appropriate’ shoes, a pair of black patent leather Mary Janes with dainty silver buckles.

They had carried on a _pro forma_ basis where neither spoke about Felicity’s impending return or the inevitable goodbye that would come with it.

There were a lot of things he _wanted_ to say, but he didn’t – _hadn’t_  – resigning himself instead to focusing on something else; _anything else_ and for most of the time that method had worked. They’d enjoyed days together and evenings tangled in each other’s arms. The holidays had stretched out into New Years sat watching fireworks under a mountain of blankets in the frigid air on his balcony.

At some stage between the heated, lustful moments against the wall in her mother’s apartment and that morning where they had snoozed the alarm three times to carve out just a few more minutes lying naked beside each other, he’d fallen in love.

_And she hadn’t._

“We should leave when you’re ready,” he said stoically as he adjusted the cuffs on his jacket.  
Felicity looked up from her shoes, a fleeting thread of sadness in her eyes. She’d noticed the elephant in the room; it was kind of hard to miss. But now wasn’t the time.  
“Sure, I’m ready.”  
She stood and flattened the black pencil skirt she’d managed to procure before checking the buttons on the bone ivory, silk-chiffon blouse. The whole ensemble looked a little too Catholic-School Girl for her liking but it was sensible and appropriate, though she’d scoffed at the shop assistant’s suggestion to wear nude stockings with it.

She hadn’t meant for this to happen; to be the cause of a certain sort of sadness in his eyes – but here they were all the same; plans be damned.

**< <<\-------->>>**

The hearing was already a few hours in and Oliver felt flustered and wholly out of his element. He was certain he had prepared for this moment and that he knew the file inside and out, but all of that was deafened by the noise in his head; the thoughts he couldn’t quieten no matter how hard he tried.

He’d missed a few rights of objection, though John had swiftly picked them up, and the collar on his shirt felt like a boa constricting his throat.

The ex, a Mr Martin Kippner the Third, was a piece of work, a suave talker with a silver tongue and a slightly southern charm that wouldn’t tarnish. Either his lawyer, a self-professed shark, had done an exceptional job of prepping his client or they had a respondent who spun a yarn so well he probably believed it himself. Either way, Oliver wasn’t sure how he could possibly get him to crack when his time came.

He also felt a drop in his stomach at the prospect of putting Donna on the stand. While he didn’t doubt her honesty, there was a dread that her forthrightness could be easily manipulated on cross.

The flustered look on his face didn’t go unnoticed by Felicity either; from the redness in his neck to the way his hand death-gripped his pen, she could tell this wasn’t him on his best form.

She took out her phone and typed Oliver a message: **Call a timeout**  
His response came after a few seconds, **That’s baseball.**  
**A recess then?**  
**You’re thinking of school.**  
**Say you need to break.**  
**It doesn’t really work like that**  
**I’m starving, can I eat Soon?**

The other lawyer finished his evidence in chief with a smug look on his face as he made his way back to his table. Oliver starred at his notes blankly as he tried to count himself in, but before he could John stood up next to him and address the Court.  
“Your Honour, perhaps we could start cross after lunch.”  
He expected a rebuttal, but none came and the proceedings were adjourned for a 45 minute lunch.

In the foyer outside, John took Oliver aside. “I’m going to talk through with Donna what she can expect,” John started, his voice clearly agitated. “You go out get some fresh air and a bagel and pull yourself together,” he added brusquely.  
Oliver tickled a slow hand from his ear to the base of his neck and sighed. “You noticed.”  
“You’re floundering out there, everyone noticed,” John growled under his breath. “Get your head clear or don’t come back into this Court room and I’ll handle it myself.” He glanced over to Felicity who was standing a few feet away with Donna. “Your head is somewhere else, get it here in 30 minutes.”

John walked away, collected Donna and left Oliver looking like a scolded puppy with his tail between his legs.  
“I guess I don’t have to worry about being a divorce lawyer for much longer,” he sighed as Felicity approached, “when this case is done John will probably fire me and I’ll be an estate lawyer instead, then I just have to deal with dead people.”  
“Self-pity doesn’t look so good on you,” Felicity teased in the deserted foyer.  
“He’s probably right, I just need to eat something, refocus.”  
“Sure, that or…” Felicity grabbed his hand and walked him across the foyer to an empty and windowless meeting room, pulling him inside. “You need to relax because you’re a bundle of nerves,” she remarked as she closed and locked the door behind her.  
“You’re right,” he sighed, nearly defeated, “let’s just go get some food.”  
He went to walk around her but she pulled him back, shoving him playfully towards the centre of the room where a pine table stained red-wood sat surrounded by six chairs. “No,” she quipped, her teeth tugging on her lip.  
“I thought you said you were hungry,” he chuckled as his hands braced against the light-weight table.  
“Oh I said starving, and I am,” she cooed. “Are there cameras in these rooms?”  
Oliver shook his head in reply. “No, they’re for confidential client meetings.”  
“Good,” she checked the lock on the door before she walked over to Oliver and started unfastening his pants.  
“What are you …?” he gaped before she spun one of the black, pleather chairs around and pushed him down into it.  
Moments later his cock was exposed and she was on her knees between his legs, wetting her lips with her tongue as a playful glint filled her eyes. “Absolutely starving,” she purred as she bent forward and kissed the tip.

Oliver shivered with the feather brush of her lips and he sucked in a gasp of air when that soft kiss evolved into something far more carnal with a flick of her tongue through his aching slit. With his eyes latched onto her, he watched her mouth pout into an O of cherry red and feed him languidly into her warm, wet mouth with the tip of her tongue guiding him towards the roof of her mouth.

Once he was settled inside her, she teased his head and tip with her swirling tongue before she gently sucked him towards the back of her mouth. Lifting her chin, and with the flat of her tongue holding him steady, Felicity slowly glided his cock down the back of her throat. The spasms strangled and caressed him, making Oliver shudder out a pleasure-spiked moan as her tonsils tickled his length.

“Jesus Felicity,” he whimpered as her hands anchored him to the seat, her thumbs sinking into the creases at the tops of his thighs to make sure he stayed still.

She winked like the incarnate of every filthy desire he'd ever had, before she began to move. Each pass at the back of her throat had him quivering in the chair as sweat beaded across his forehead and his knuckles turned pale while they clutched the arm rest. His shoulders shook and quivered as he constricted every muscle to stay perfectly still.

His feet quaked in his black Oxfords, stamping out a beat like the wagging tail of an ecstatic dog.

Her throat was flushed red and he watched with enamoured awe as he saw the faint movements of him, down her. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he stammered, every other word completely erased from his vocabulary, until he found himself stammering out sharp slithers of her name, “Feh. Lis. Fuck. Iss. A. Fuck. Tee.”

As the last syllable of her name shook off his lips, she snuck her hand around his thigh and gently cupped his throbbing balls until she felt them shiver and twitch.

She pulled back, slipping him out of her mouth, and caught his hard length in the palm of her hand.  
“We don’t have the time to wait for your cool down period,” she winked as her gentle hand strokes kept him on the very precipice of climax. “And we’re not done yet.”

With Oliver mopping the sweat on his brow with the tail of his shirt, Felicity stood and shuffled out of her panties, before she put them, crumpled up, on the table.  
“Now fuck me,” she ordered, her voice a silvery rasp, her lips still glistened from before. “Take every bit of that nervous energy, that frustration; just take everything you’re feeling and pound it into me.” Her eyes lolled back as her chest pinked with desire, her fingers dancing along the crest of her breasts over the almost-sheer top. “Make it so deep and so frenzied that I have to bury my face into my arm to stop from yelling out my pleasure.”

The last words came out slightly moaned as she felt her walls crushing around air, desperate to be filled. She tweaked her own breast, pinching it between her thumb and forefinger and making herself keen in pleasure, much to his delight. “I want to feel _every_ inch of you. I want you to steal my breath and leave my legs weak.”

His tongue peeked out from behind his lips and wet them gently as he considered her proposal. His chest was tight, and his hands fisted, antsy, at his sides. He was angry, at himself, at his father, at every fucking little circumstance that put him here.

She kissed him, roughly grating her teeth along his bottom lip making Oliver hiss while her nails slid under the collar of his shirt. Without warning she sunk her nails into his flesh and Oliver moaned as though in that act alone she had released something inside him.  
“Fuck me Oliver, hard, fast, insane.” Her fingertips soothed intricate circles over the spots she had just dug trenches into. She was drawing out his monster.

She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth, the tug making Oliver groan, as she ground her body against his raging erection.

Her hands stretched to the two corners of the table as she perched on the very edge of it.  
“That moment I walked into your office, with a table not unlike this one,” she dropped her head back, spilling her dark hair against the top and showing the pink threads of her throat. “Tell me what you thought, what you wanted?”  
He could feel his temperature rising as he watched her fingers dance along the neckline of her shirt. “Did you want to fuck me Oliver?”  
He should say _no_ because the truth was far too telling. “Yes.” _Fuck it._  
She lifted her head and smirked. “How? How did you want me Oliver?” she purred.  
He opened his mouth to answer but she silenced him with a finger pressed to his lips. “Show me Oliver, here, now.”

He kissed her and raked his fingers through her hair, gripping it at the crown and forcing her head to tip backwards. He kissed her neck, feeling each pulse like a trance. Roughly his hand cupped her breast, making her sigh loudly before she bit back and tremored moan.

He spun her around and she bent over, laying her forearms flat on the varnished wood.  
“I wanted you,” he rasped, the words guttural and thick with gravel. He pressed against her, his cock digging into her ass as he skipped fiery kisses along her jaw. “I wanted to touch you,” he whispered, the words burning into her skin as a single digit skimmed up the inside of her thigh. “I wanted to taste you.” His lips caressed her lobe as his finger sliced between wet folds and gathered her arousal. “All of you.”

She looked back around her shoulder just as Oliver fed the glistening finger into his puckered lips and smiled as her sweet arousal bled into his taste buds.  
“You’re already wet,” he grinned after he smacked his lips obscenely together.  
She laughed, slightly hoarse, “I got myself ready.”  
He shimmied up her skirt till it hung around her waist. “In Court?” he quizzed while he feathered the tips of his fingers across the supple rounds of her alabaster rear.  
“Don’t worry,” she cooed, almost whispered, “the power of a woman’s mind is almost as effective as her fingers.”  
He cupped her curve and squeezed the handfuls of ass as her head fell forward and her hair pooled on the table. “What were you thinking of?” he asked as his body rode against hers, skimming his hard length between her canal.  
“You,” she answered, almost breathless as Oliver gripped the middle of his rod and pumped it twice against her. “This,” she added with a moan as she raised her ass, pressing it into his core.

He felt his way with his fingers through her sweltering folds as he lined himself up with her entrance.  
“I thought about you that first night,” he sighed while his head skirted her aching sex.  
The tormenting ache was almost too much and Felicity found herself panting out a begged, “Please.”  
He nudged just the tip inside her and she hummed in pleasure as she tipped her hips to swallow more of him. But his hands steadied her at the waist, holding her still. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you Felicity,” he rasped as his grip on her tightened as he slammed himself deep inside her, completely to the hilt without respite.

She caught her scream in her hand as her body swelled with him and her feet nearly lifted off the ground. The feeling was euphoric and it took Felicity a few moments to remember to breathe as her body engulfed him.

He pulled on her hips as he thrust hard and fast into her, making her meet his every thrust with one of her own. She wanted to moan and cuss and beg for more but there was only so much sound the four walls around them would absorb and she bit her lip roughly to control the urge.

His cock felt like a jackhammer, pounding into her relentlessly until her hips went limp in his arms. Her cheek felt hot against the table and her eyes squeezed shut as she immersed herself in the feeling of it.

The sounds of her ass slapping against his body and the tight moans that escaped her swollen lips spurred Oliver on, harder and faster, watching every inch of his cock be consumed by her. She was tight and warm and every other thought in his head soon vanished, replaced with nothing but her; her heady scent tipped with the musky aroma of sweat, the pink blush painting her milky skin, the sweet drippings of pleasure that came in keening cries and the moment she climaxed, like a warm blanket of silk covering his cock.

He wanted to pull out, to stop himself, to make this moment last as long as he _fucking possibly could_ , but in an instance he was buried inside her, filling her with his own ribbons of pleasure.

She smiled as he slowed, their bodies completely satisfied and spent. Her knees were weak and her breathing was short and ragged as his grip relaxed and his thrusts became languid before finally stopping a few moments later.  
“Thank you,” he whispered as he slumped, soft-cocked, onto the chair.  
“My absolute pleasure,” Felicity effused while she cleaned up and pulled herself together; straightening her skirt and smoothing down her hair.

“Suitably relaxed?” she smiled as she folded the wet wipes they’d used to wipe themselves off into a clean one and tucked it in her bag to dispose of on a swing by of the bathroom.  
“Suitably,” he hummed as he swung his arms around her waist. “But I don’t know how to crack him, I’m certain with what we found there were other women, but I don’t know how I can get him to admit to it and without his express confirmation we’re pushing water up hill.”  
“You know what men like him like?” Felicity said as she fastened his black-leather belt.  
“What?”  
“To brag,” she said coyly. “So be the type of frat boy he might like to brag to.”  
“Any ideas how?”  
“I might have one.”

**< <<\-------->>>**

Felicity popped a small bubble as she waited outside the Court room. Martin was standing across the hall next to his lawyer, who had his back turned and moved a few feet away while he talked on the phone.

Moments later, Felicity watched Oliver walk towards them and he gave her a brief, barely noticeable nod as the sign, _he was ready_. He’d grown up watching his father be this type of man, acting like one shouldn’t be all that hard.

Felicity turned to the side and dropped her bag in an orchestrated display which let only a few things tumble out.

Oliver stopped beside the older man and blew out a breathy sigh as a devilish grin took his lips. Out of the corner of his eye he saw exactly what Felicity had predicted, the greying Martin was staring at her too.  
“The legs on that one, am I right?” Oliver mumbled under his breath, a gritty rasp in his voice and a snide chuckle at the end.  
For a minute the other man was silent and Oliver wondered if they’d played their hand wrong, but before he could dwell on that _what if,_ the answer came in a grunted response.  
“Almost as nice as that ass she floats around with.”  
Oliver laughed, and hid the fact this exchange made him feel sick to his stomach, but it was Felicity’s idea to give him common ground with the man, and it just might work. “The mouth is pretty perfect if you know what I mean.”  
“As long as she has something in it.”

The doors opened and everyone filed into the Court room; _time for phase two._

Phase two involved Oliver and Felicity looking as though they were involved in a heated discussion just as Martin strolled past, at which time Oliver, with a greasy voice and a chauvinistic smirk said, “Look sweetheart, this is for the lawyers to work out, go home and paint your nails or something, the men have this.”  
Then, like the cherry on the top, he rolled his eyes – and more importantly, Martin rolled his back.

Felicity left the Court room in a perfectly dramatized huff, but as she let the door close behind her, she smiled and silently wished Oliver good luck.

**< <<\-------->>>**

“How did it go?” Felicity asked as everyone emerged from the Court room a few hours later.  
“Good news and bad news I’m afraid,” Oliver sighed, hanging his head low.  
Felicity readied herself then requested, “Bad news first.”  
“Donna bought this very demure Court dress and now won’t be able to wear it on the stand, because,” his stoic face shifted into a smile, “we settled.”  
“Oliver got him singing like a damn canary, rattling off all the women he’s been involved with while still married, it was something to behold,” John remarked as he slapped his protégé proudly on the shoulder.  
“Long story short,” Oliver continued, “his lawyer, after he picked up his jaw from the ground, asked for a short adjournment to confer with his client and they offered us a settlement.”  
“It’s a good one baby,” Donna chirped in with an excited clap.  
“You’re happy?” Felicity asked as Donna grabbed her by the wrist and beamed.  
“I’m thrilled, son of a bitch won’t mess with a Smoak woman again.”  
“To be fair, there _are_ only two of us,” Felicity laughed after she embraced her mom. “So that’s it, it’s all done?”  
Oliver nodded, his eyes never diverting off Felicity. “John and Donna are going to go and iron out the particulars, but yes, that’s it.”  
“You did good Oliver,” John praised as his gestured to lead Donna away. “You’ll make a fine lawyer,” he paused and looked at Felicity, “or should I say _divorce_ lawyer.”

It was only as Oliver bowed his head to laugh, that he noticed the suitcase at Felicity's feet. “You’re leaving now? I thought you weren’t going until tomorrow.”  
She offered him a trembled and apologetic smile. “My flight leaves in a couple of hours.”  
Donna embraced her daughter a second time. “Call me when you get back to Boston,” she instructed as she pulled away.  
“I will.”  
“It was nice to meet you Felicity,” John added as he extended his hand and she took it.  
“Oliver told me the crack about the iPhone,” she smiled as she shook John’s hand, “Just so you know I can’t programme it to kill you, only maim.”  
John laughed from deep in his belly, stopping only when he saw the devilish grin on her face. “Good to know.”

Then they were alone, just the two of them.  
“You did good in there, I wish I could have seen it,” Felicity remarked as she scuffed her far more ‘on brand’ black Docs across the carpet.  
“I thought we'd have more time,” Oliver said softly, a slight shake in his voice.  
“I know, I’m sorry, but I need to go tonight.”  
“Give us another night,” he pleaded, his eyes holding hers like a magnet, glassy with unspent tears.  
She held her own tears back by chewing on the inside of her cheeks before she answered him with a thin and shaky reply, “Oliver I can’t.”  
His fingertips twisted into hers. “Why not?”  
“I’m afraid,” she answered softly, her eyes falling to the ground as her words gave so much of her away.  
A single finger lifted her at the chin and a soft smile met her eyes. “Afraid of what?” Oliver asked as his fingers speckled touches down her neck.  
“Afraid that one more night with you and I wouldn't leave,” she whispered, the truth giving way to a few trembled breaths.  
“Then don't,” he answered almost immediately.  
She swallowed down the uncertainty that wracked her body; because she knew what she had to do. “I have to,” she replied, offering him the smallest of smiles, it wouldn’t end in sadness, it deserved better than that. “I have school and everything that I've worked for. I can't give all that up Oliver, and I think you know I shouldn’t.”  
His thumb circled her wrist, memorising the softness of her skin. “You're right, you shouldn’t,” he sighed, resigned to it. “But that doesn't mean you have to leave us. We could make this work. I could travel on weekends, we could...”  
She kissed him quickly to stop the words from barrelling out of his mouth and when she pulled away a single tear bled down her cheek. “Please don't Oliver, please don't tempt me. Because even if we did, if we _could_ , in a few months we'd be right back here, having this same talk,” her lips furrowed as she tried to keep a smile on them, but it wavered with each breath she took. “I need to leave. I need to find out what the world has for me. I need to discover who _I_ am and where I’m going, even if that means leaving this…” she bit back a sob before she continued, “…leaving you.”

He watched her as she brushed away that solitary tear and kept that beautiful smile, albeit unsteady, on her lips. “This life you have it isn't mine,” she said softly as her fingers traced across his knuckles, “and I'm terrified just how much my heart wants it to be.” Another tear, another swish of her fingers across her ruddy cheek. “But it's not. It can't be.” He touched her face and her eyes gently closed as she steadied her breathing. “I don't want to wake up one day, look around and realise that I didn’t do anything. I don’t want to wake up to regret for a path I didn’t take, and a dream I didn’t follow. I don’t want to regret you, regret us, because the time I’ve spent with you has been amazing and I wouldn’t trade what we had for anything. But you have a life that I'm just not ready for. You want what I can't offer you yet.”

“It's not my life either,” Oliver argued, his voice thin and near-broken. “Let me go with you. I'll show you.”  
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, Oliver I don’t know, but I don’t want you to regret me either,” she spoke softly as her fingers traced the lines on his hand. “It's okay to want that family, that life, if it’s truly what you want, then that’s okay and you deserve to find someone who wants that with you. You can’t give that up for me.” Fingertips danced on fingertips. “It’s also okay not to want that life, or even to be absolutely clueless about what you want. But whatever you do, whatever you want, let it be because _you_ chose it. Not because of a girl you just met.”

He turned her hand and kissed the back of her knuckles tenderly. “I don't want to let you leave,” he whispered to them.  
“And I don't want to leave,” she whispered back as her hand slipped from his.  
“But you're right Felicity.” The words surprised even him. “The truth is I don't know what I want and I should know. Just like I know that I fell in love with you.” Those words came as no surprise.  
“I fell in love with you too,” she admitted.  
“Sometimes you find the right person at the wrong time. I think that’s us,” he lamented as he pinned her hair back and memorised the smile on her burgundy lips.  
“And what do you suppose people do about that?”  
“Hope that maybe fate, destiny, whatever higher purpose you want to believe in; that it has something in store for us.”  
“Not a goodbye then?” she hushed as her smile grew beneath the trail of another tear.  
He leaned in and kissed her cheek, stealing the tear. “Not a goodbye.” He pulled his lips away from her and grazed his fingers down her neck, taking those last few moments so he could remember them for a lifetime. “You, Felicity Smoak, are one of the best people I've had the pleasure of meeting. The world will know your name one day. I’m certain of it.”  
His hand fell away and her lips pushed together a quivered smile of thanks. “And you have the largest arms I’ve ever seen,” she laughed as two more tears sprung from her eyes.  
He laughed too, and Felicity lifted her body onto her tip toes and kissed the smile from his lips and the warmth from his breath, capturing it for a memory she wouldn’t soon forget.

“I'm going to miss you,” he whispered as their foreheads pressed together and their noses nuzzled against each other.  
“Back at you Oliver the divorce lawyer.”

She pulled away and Oliver brushed his thumb across her cheek and through a stray tear. “Go and set the world on fire.”  
She took the handle of her suitcase, turned and began to walk away, but stopped only a few feet from where she’d left him. She turned back to face him and, taking one slow step backwards, she smiled and said, “If you're ever feeling reckless Oliver; do it. Don’t be afraid of it. Because what is a life if you don’t _live_ it.”

Those were the very same words she’d said to him that evening at the bar what seemed like a lifetime ago; only this time he understood them so much better.

Felicity then blew him a kiss, brushed her dark hair over one shoulder and walked out of his life; just as remarkably as she had walked into it.

_Like a beautiful whirlwind._

 

**> >The End<<**

  
**A/N. Yes, there is an epilogue. No I won’t divulge what happens in it.**

**\\\ a story should end giving you enough to leave you satisfied in the moment, but hold back just enough to capture your imagination for much longer //**


	10. Epilogue

 

**> June 2009<**

Felicity ran her fingers through her hair; it was a little lighter and much shorter now, still dark, but more of a mahogany than a deep black and gone were the multi colours that had once streaked through it. She smiled at her reflection as she thought, _momentarily_ , about joining her mother and reinventing herself as a blonde.  
_Maybe one day,_ she thought to herself with a sarcastic wink.

She looked around the empty dorm room which she had cleared out a few days before. Anything she wanted to keep had been packed up and sent on a one way trip to her mother’s storage unit in Starling, destined probably to be forgotten or become obsolete.

There was only one bag left. A green canvas duffle bag decorated with a few sassy patches which sat at her feet. It wasn’t big or ostentatious and it wasn’t even full; but it had everything she needed inside it and everything else she’d just figure out on the way.

She tapped her finger on the plane ticket on her lap. It wasn’t exactly Tokyo or London, or Rome, or in fact anywhere all that exciting, but she’d get there _eventually_. With one last glance around the room she’d called home for so long, she thanked it with a smile, walked out and closed the door – one final time – behind her.

It was time to see the world.  
_Or at least Vancouver._

**< <<\-------->>>**

One valedictorian speech and a flow of graduates later, it was all said and done and Felicity shucked her gown and hat before she dropped them into her mother's arms. It was time to go.

“Are you sure I can’t take you to the airport?” Donna asked, after the compulsory 20 minute ‘photoshoot’ with Felicity that she had insisted on.  
“No, I have a ride and I’m going straight through to departures, so let’s just say goodbye now.”  
It was a fib, but Felicity was prepared to deal with paying penance for that in the afterlife; the truth was that her flight didn’t leave for another 5 hours.

Donna nodded, and Felicity was surprised there wasn’t more of a fight, but she wasn’t about to question that turn of good fortune.  
“You’ve done me proud,” Donna sobbed happily, “I’ve always been proud of you.”  
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Felicity replied, brushing away a single tear before she gave her mother one last embrace.  
“Remember to enjoy the sunshine baby girl.”  
Donna waved her daughter on, her cheeks streaked with tears.

A short jaunt later and Felicity walked down the front steps, feeling the breeze on her face as she took deep inhales of the crisp afternoon air. This was it; what she’d worked for, what she wanted; _and yet,_ something felt like it was missing.

She glanced over her shoulder one last time and silently thanked the bricks and mortar behind her for the years she grew behind them, and when she turned back around to face the world something at the bottom of the stairs captured her eye.

The sun had caught the chrome exhaust pipe just right and it shone like a beacon up towards her. Felicity’s eyes followed the lines of chrome and rubber until they met with leather. A statuesque figure leaned against the seat of the polished road bike donned in leather, standing with one leg bent and a helmet tucked under his bulky arm.

She took a step towards him, then another and she only needed one more before she knew the face she was seeing behind the aviator glasses wasn’t a mirage.

Oliver pushed off from the bike and walked towards where Felicity had stopped a few feet away, with his heart thumping out of his chest, his stomach in his throat and her words playing on repeat in his mind; _If you're ever feeling reckless Oliver; do it. Don’t be afraid of it. Because what is a life if you don’t live it._

He stopped just ahead of her, close enough to hear the shaky breaths that were stumbling from her mouth.  
“I thought you might want a lift,” he greeted, the first words they had spoken in what seemed like a lifetime, despite both of them longing to pick up the phone for the last 5 months. When she still hadn’t managed words a few moments later, Oliver continued, “You said you wanted a stranger on a bike, I’m no stranger, but what do you say?” He held out the helmet from under his arm.

Felicity took it, running her fingers over the smooth black casing as though she was checking it was really in her hands, and he was really here, in front of her.  
“My flight doesn’t leave for like 5 hours,” she finally spoke, laughing as she shook her head.  
“Coffee then?”  
“Make mine a double-shot, I’m feeling a little risky today,” she answered coquettishly before she slipped the helmet onto her head.

It wasn’t until Felicity was sitting with her arms around his waist and the wind lapping at her cheeks as they drove, that she realised the feeling she’d had earlier about something missing was now gone.

  
**< <<\-------->>>**

“You know I could have caught a taxi right?” Felicity smiled as she tapped her crimson nail on the side of the porcelain coffee cup.  
The little café where they sat was set back down an alleyway, it was an eclectic little place she had discovered a few months ago but hadn’t been back to since. There were vinyl records on the wall and knitted plant holders decorated the tables. The smell of coffee was mingled with the fresh cut flowers and there was a low ambience of folk songs that felt reminiscent of a bygone era she would have loved to have lived through.  
“I know,” Oliver laughed, his azure eyes glancing from his coffee into hers. She quickly noted they looked different somehow, lighter, _free_. “But,” he continued with a smack of his wet lips, “I just had this urge to be a little reckless and someone very smart once told me I should just do it.”  
A smile filled her slightly rouged cheeks. “They sound very smart,” she remarked matter-of-factly.  
“Smartest person I know.”  
She returned his kindly smile with a soft and honest one of her own, though the weight of his eyes had her blinking away, afraid of the hold they still had on her. “I'm not sure about that Oliver the divorce lawyer,” she shot back with half a smirk cocking the left side of her mouth.  
“Actually,” he breathed out, a nuance of relief in it, “it's more like Oliver the unemployed lawyer. I quit.”  
She swallowed her mouthful of coffee without choking despite the surprise. Not that it was necessarily a surprise that he _should_ have but more that he actually _had_.  
“You quit?” she exclaimed.  
Oliver bobbed his head in a triumphant nod. It had been a decision years in the making and he had finally made it. “A week after you left I realised I was wasting my time there hating every minute of it,” he recounted. It wasn’t a lie; it wasn’t even an exaggeration, with fresh eyes Oliver had forced himself to face what he’d ignored for so long; _he wasn't living the life he wanted and he had only himself to blame for that._

He had typed a resignation letter there and then, cashed in his holidays and walked out.  
“Donna Smoak was my first, last and _only_ divorcee client,” he added with a level of brevity that only came from the sense of freedom he now felt.

That was what she saw in his calm, oceanic eyes. She had been right; there was a sense of freedom in them bursting to get out.  
“So you just quit,” she said with an air of both pride and suspended disbelief. “How did John take that?”  
“‘About damn time’ were his exact words?”  
“And your dad?”  
A languishing sigh stole the light from his eyes for just a moment. “This is a nice place Felicity so I won't repeat what he said verbatim,” Oliver jested, though it was clear enough to Felicity there was some truth in it. “But he wasn't happy.”

Honestly, based on only his father's reaction to the news, someone might have assumed that Oliver had committed some sort of unforgivable and heinous crime. Moira had tried to play it down as ‘surprise’, but given a day to reconcile with Oliver’s decision to quit or a year, he knew that Robert's reaction would have been the same.

“Still,” Oliver continued, folding his fingers together on the table, “I was.”  
And for once, that was all that mattered.  
“So what have you been doing?” she asked, her eyes filled with a sense of pride she had for the man sitting across the mahogany table, sans fake ring.  
“I've kept myself busy enough,” he answered vaguely before turning the conversation back to Felicity. “But you, a graduate, that’s impressive.”  
She shrugged impulsively, she was proud, she worked damn hard to be proud but she was never one to take commendation without a little humility on the side. “Apparently.”  
He seemed to lean in a little closer as though magnets drew them inch by inch nearer without them even knowing. “How does it feel?”  
“Like I have no fucking clue what I'm doing,” she laughed, effervescent and unapologetic, he’d missed that laugh.  
“The hair looks nice,” he remarked as he watched her fingers coil through the shoulder lengths.  
“I figured a little change never hurt anyone.”  
“So where is the plane ticket to?” he asked as he nodded towards the bag sat on the empty seat beside them.  
“Vancouver,” she answered, her eyes sparking with a laugh. “It’s nowhere amazing, but I’ll get there.”  
“I don’t doubt it,” he remarked kindly.

His eyes studied the small ripples on the surface of his long-black as his fingers gently tapped the outside of the cup. “I've missed you,” he said quietly just as his eyes panned up to hers.  
Felicity smiled, soft and supple lips turned up at one side. “I've missed you too.”  
“But you were right about me,” he added as he pushed the half-drunk drink to the side. “I needed to figure a few things out.”  
She pinned back a section of hair as her eyes settled on him, watching for nothing in particular. “And did you?”  
He let out a breathy chuckle as his shoulders lifted into a hapless shrug. “Honestly I'm still figuring some stuff out, but aren't we always at least to some degree?”  
Felicity nodded in agreement of the sentiment; she should now. “I would drink to that,” she effused. “How's Thea?”  
“It seems like I wasn't the only one you had an impact on,” he answered warmly as he settled back against the chair, idly rolling his large shoulders, much to Felicity’s delight, though she held back a sigh when she remembered just how much pleasure she had once garnered from them. “She's back at school with a 5 year plan to eventually study photography in Africa.” He laughed as he spoke, but the pride on his face was unmissable.  
“That was all her idea,” Felicity bantered with two raised palms.  
“I know but you gave her the courage to follow it.”  
There was a moment where the conversation lapsed into a relaxed silence, one where he appreciated the impact Felicity had made on his sister’s life and where she graciously accepted it with a smile.  
“She’s a good kid, she probably just needed a stranger to tell her that,” Felicity offered with a humble shrug. “And Roxanne?” A name that would never not make her smile.  
He grinned, almost stupidly, and yet it suited his face even with his perfect jawline and his chiselled cheekbones. “She's good, Thea is taking care of her at the moment.”

“How did you know about graduation?” she asked with a raised brow as the question suddenly occurred to her.  
“Hey the ex lawyer here can't divulge all his sources,” Oliver said smugly, though a laugh soon cracked his serious expression.  
Felicity’s eyes narrowed as she studied him for only a moment; that was all she needed. “My mom told you didn't she?”  
Oliver threw his head back in a laugh. Everything about him was so much lighter now. “I'm that transparent am I?”  
“Actually no,” Felicity admitted, she might have gotten a little sixth-sense from him, but there was another reason she was sure of the culprit. “She is. I wondered why she didn't put up a real fight to take me to the airport.”  
His face settled into a soft smile while his hands spread, palms down, on the table, the tips of his large hands so close that she would only need to move an inch or two to brush her fingers against his. “I hope it's okay that I’m here.”  
She soothed the worry that twitched his brow with a warm smile and a small nod. “It’s okay Oliver,” she assured him. “We didn't call time on us because we'd stopped caring. At least that’s how I feel,” she admitted, the truth colouring her cheeks a light and glowing peach.

But this wasn’t about a ride to the airport and they both knew that.  
“Why are you here Oliver?” she asked, her voice nearly whispered.  
He reached inside his leather jacket, took out a slip of paper tucked inside a white cardboard sleeve, laid it on the table, tapped it once and then slid it across the varnished table top towards Felicity.  
“I’m here for this,” he said softly as he raised his fingers from the paper and dropped them into his lap.  
Felicity looked at the non-descript folder with parted lips and a curious brow. “Oliver what is this?”  
“It’s a plane ticket to Tokyo leaving in about 3 hours.”  
“I don’t understand,” she sighed, her finger brushing the smooth edge with an inquisitive touch.  
“I have one too.” He opened his jacket and tucked inside was a second, identical package. “That one is yours if you want it,” he commented, nodding down to it.  
She was speechless and her eyes blinked just as rapidly as her mind churned to make sense of it all.  
“I’m going anyway,” he clarified, “I have a job interview there in a few weeks, with Tommy’s partner, the man we met at dinner.”  
“I remember,” she breathed, her eyes anchored to the table.  
“I know it’s only been five months, and I know that I said that we had to trust that fate has something else in store for us, but…” he leaned forward, touching the opposite end of the ticket to where Felicity’s fingers lingered, “…I thought maybe fate could use a hand.”

“It’s an open ended ticket so you can return at any time. The truth is Felicity,” he danced across her hand with his fingertips, continuing when she didn’t pull them away, “I haven’t stopped thinking about you, or us. I don’t have my life figured out, but I am finally _living_ it. I know what I want and part of that is sitting in front of me, right now. And I’m feeling a little reckless.” He took her hand, pressing it between his trembling ones. “What do you say, are you feeling a little reckless too?”

She finally looked up at him, uncertainty threading through her expression as her lips furrowed with thoughts, and then she steadied the whirlwind of her mind with one slow, steady breath. Maybe it wasn’t that confusing after all; because when she exhaled only one thought remained.

  
**> 3 Years Later<**

Oliver cleared his throat and straightened his tie before he delicately tapped the polished silverware on the crystal champagne flute and rose from his seat.

The room hushed as Oliver smiled warmly down at the person beside him, a face beaming with joy.  
“Hello,” he said with a spritely smile, “I think most of you know me.” A soft chuckle went around the room. “But if not, I’m Oliver, and this right here is my best friend.” He laid a hand on the shoulder beside him and squeezed. “And boy do I have a few stories I could tell you.” Another laugh, slightly louder this time, echoed around the room. “But I’m afraid I haven’t had nearly enough champagne to start rattling those off,” he took a sip from his glass and the crowd played into it, applauding, “almost,” he added with a wink. “But before I set about incriminating myself with these stories,” he turned to face the gleaming smile, “I’m honoured to be here beside you and I’m so happy that you found the love you deserve.” He raised his glass higher, nodded his head and exclaimed, “to Tommy and Hiro.”

The reception hall buzzed with the energy of at least 60 cheering friends as Tommy stood up and embraced Oliver with a tight hug.  
“Right back at you,” Tommy whispered before the two parted.

Oliver smiled thankfully before his eyes moved to the spot he’d been looking at most of the night. Their eyes met and he gave Felicity as small wave which she reciprocated in kind. Her raven hair was pulled back with soft tendrils framing her porcelain face. Her makeup was enchanting; shadowed eyes and a deep plum pout and as for her dress, a backless, deep-grey midi that fit her like a glove, he had wanted to tear that off her from the moment she’d put it on.

“Your best man duties are done for a little while, go over to your lady friend,” Tommy encouraged.  
Oliver nodded with a childlike grin before he slalomed around banquet chairs until he scooted into an empty seat next to Felicity.

“Nice speech,” she chirped as she absently straightened his tie.  
“God I missed you,” he rasped before he pulled her into a playful but passionate kiss sans tongues; they were in public after all.  
“I’ve been sitting here the whole time,” she laughed just as his lips lifted off hers.  
“Come outside with me?” Oliver asked, though he stood and grabbed her hand before she had a chance to answer.  
“I found a closet on my way to the bathroom earlier, it’s down a quiet hall,” she grinned as his arms slid around her waist. She subtly ground her hips against his leg and watched a salacious grin twist up his lips.  
“Definitely that, soon,” he growled, low and gravelly, near her ear.

He took her hand and entwined their fingers before he led her from the classy event. It was late autumn and the chill in the air hit Felicity’s bare arms quite suddenly making her shiver while Oliver closed the door behind her. He shuffled off his suit jacket and wrapped it around her svelte shoulders before they walked further out onto the rooftop balcony.

They reached the glass railing and Oliver filled his lungs with the crisp air of the night as the music from inside became little more than ambience that melded with the distant and constant bustle of sounds that Tokyo was known for.

His work as a civil liberties lawyer was a niche he both thrived in and enjoyed. It wouldn’t make him rich, not even nearly, but Oliver was absolutely okay with that. Felicity had worked her way through the ranks of a multinational corporation and had just been made the head of its Cyber Research and Development department. Life was good.

It was a beautiful night and the sky was lit with twinkling lights both natural and not, but all the same, from their rooftop vantage point it looked dazzling.

“Tommy looked happy,” Felicity simpered as she gazed across the bustling city skyline.  
Oliver’s brow worried before he sighed, woeful. “A partnership certificate isn’t the same as a marriage licence but maybe one day,” he lamented with his elbows balanced on the railing.  
“With people like you at the helm of it, I’m sure that day will come soon,” Felicity replied before she delicately kissed the cusp of his shoulder.

“Do you remember 3 years ago in that little cafe with the records on the wall…” Oliver began.  
“And the knitted potted plant holders on the table?” Felicity finished with a smile.  
“That’s the one,” he nodded.  
She threaded her arm through his and looked up his tall frame. “How could I forget?”  
“I asked you to take a chance on me, on us, when I asked you to come here with me,” he continued, turned his body enough to be looking only at her.

A light breeze scattered the loose threads of Felicity’s hair across her face before she pinned them back with one hand while the other held Oliver’s jacket on her shoulders. “I remember,” she hummed fondly. “And if I remember correctly my answer was ‘Fuck yeah,’ and then I told you to kiss me like you meant it.”

He kissed her chilly lips, warming them with a mist of his tepid breath. “I meant it.”  
“We were worth taking a chance on,” she breathed as he pulled away, though their lips still dangled close. She pressed her body against hips, carelessly grinding her body into him as she sighed amorously. “Then we ended up in that motel and almost missed our flight,” she added with a husky growl. Given a little time and privacy, Felicity was in no doubt that she could probably make herself climax to that memory alone.

“I still mean it,” he whispered as he brushed back strands of hair, his knuckles grazing against her creamy complexion.  
“And I’ve never looked back.” Her eyes were closing as her full lips whispered the words like honey.  
“Even when we brought Roxanne over?” he asked with a lopsided smile.  
Felicity laughed, her small frame shaking under the bulk of his jacket. “At least she finally stopped hissing at me,” she effused.

“I want to ask you to take a chance on us again Felicity,” Oliver said, his words like silk and his eyes glassy with emotion.  
Felicity looked at him with wonder as her nose crinkled; she didn’t understand what he meant.

Oliver dipped his hand into the pocket of his dress pants and returned with a small, velvet box sitting in his palm. He cracked it open and the beautiful engagement ring inside made the bright lights of Tokyo pale in comparison.

“Felicity Megan Smoak,” Oliver started as he dropped to one knee, “the smartest and most stunning woman I know, my partner, my very best friend, the love of my life, will you take a chance on this bleeding heart lawyer,” he took her hand and brushed a tender kiss across her knuckles. “Will you marry me?” he breathed, ghosting the words across her shaking hand.

She knelt down, cupped his head in one hand and smiled with quivering lips. “Fuck yes,” she gushed, her words barely above a whisper.  
He slipped the ring, a perfect princess cut diamond with four smaller diamonds set either side of it, onto her finger, smiling at the perfect fit of it, before they both stood.  
“Now, kiss me like you mean it Oliver the fiancé,” she teased coyly.

And just like he had 3 years prior, Oliver held her around the waist, dipped her to one side and pounced his lips onto hers in a deep and passionate kiss that said everything it needed to.

Some things are worth taking a chance on and life is always better _lived_.

**> <**

_**Thank you to everyone who commented, dropped a kudos or simply took the time to read and enjoy this story. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it (in case it wasn’t obvious, I adore Goth!Felicity) and while I’m sad to bid this universe farewell, this is exactly the story I envision months and months ago, so for that I’m happy.** _

_**Of course, Ash, you know I’m going to thank you because I adore you and I hope there was enough desk sex to keep you sustained, at least for now. Does STST have a desk???** _

_**Dedicated to an unwitting muse, Simon, thank god you couldn’t read minds.** _

_**xox** _

****

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think xox 
> 
> Tumblr/Twitter @someonesaidcake


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